by Diana Forbes
For the good of the cause, I accepted Clarissa’s generosity. Though I wished I could escape from the long, menacing shadow of Edgar’s reach.
Friday, July 28, 1893
Clarissa Clements’s hedges were the envy of the neighborhood. Nary a dead leaf nor errant branch marred her green walls, which formed a perfect ninety-degree angle to the plush grass carpet underfoot. To dampen any negative press (which Clarissa abhorred more than the chicken pox), I had to give my word that we would start our speech with neither bicycles nor quadracycles, and instead, “stick to the facts, not gimmicks.”
Thirty women, dressed in muslins, poplins, and garden hats, marched through her hedges as if at a regular croquet party and conglomerated near the lemonade and scones. Willard Clements was the only man who bothered to show up—the fact that he lived on the premises, notwithstanding. He crashed into two footmen’s unguarded trays of water.
A giant white awning shaded part of the lawn, and under the big tent hundreds of chairs were arranged with an aisle in between. At the front sprawled a makeshift platform stage that Sam and I had built a few days earlier. Verdana had a strong belief in the power of stages to lend our talks an aura of legitimacy.
At the stroke of noon, Verdana, dressed in Tartan plaid bloomers topped with a yellow ribbon belt, clapped her hands and asked the group to take their seats. The women obeyed, polite but restrained. They tittered, and some pointed at us. They seemed to regard us as the entertainment. These are Edgar’s friends, I thought. They care only about Society, not suffrage.
Speaking trumpet in hand, I mounted the stage. Dressed in a long, pink gown with the required mountain of undergarments weighing me down, I moved slowly. Pausing by a small table off to the side, I poured myself some lemon water. Drinking it soothed some of the jitters of speaking first. Due to the small audience size, Verdana chose to sit with the onlookers until I summoned her to the stage. That way, I could look out and see a friendly face, as she said.
“Good afternoon, Ladies, and thank you for coming to this forum on Dress Reform,” I declared. “My name is Penelope Stanton.”
No one clapped.
“As some of you know, I’m a Newport native.”
Tepid applause followed. It was hard to rouse this crowd from its complacency.
“I found some fascinating research in our local library. And, today I’m here to tell you about the ‘war’ that gets no press.”
A few women raised their heads and sat up straighter. I heard a bee buzzing nearby that painted the incident with Mr. Daggers fresh in my mind. Ignoring the sound, I focused on the audience.
This was the turning point—the moment that mattered.
“The War of 1812 lasted three years,” I shouted. “The Civil War, four. Whatever you may think of the War of 1812 and the Civil War, these wars were fought by men against men; and after a short period of time, the issues were resolved.” I raised my arms in a V-shape above my head. “By comparison, the American Dress Reform Movement has been waging for forty-two years—”
“More like languishing,” a woman heckled.
A small wicker basket, filled with tomatoes, hung from the crook of her elbow. I glanced at her hands: they were smooth, unlike a farmer’s hands. The wrinkled matron next to her held a basket of cabbages. Her hands were elderly but smooth, without calluses. Next to her sat a white-haired woman with a vague resemblance to Mark Twain. In her pink, silken lap lay a wicker basket teeming with more tomatoes. Her hands were as genteel as her seatmates’. I wondered if their husbands were railroad magnates, men deeply opposed to the cause.
All three women wore enormous hats—and even bigger frowns. Oh no!
“And still, we are imprisoned in our petticoats,” I cried.
Mild applause greeted my punch line. I spotted a bunch of fans deployed among the audience members as the temperature climbed and the heat started to exert its toll. If they were busy fanning their faces, it meant the women weren’t listening—not really.
“Brave women like Amelia Bloomer cast off the burden of heavy skirts for something more practical,” I said.
“But plumb ugly!” the heckler screamed. She reached into her basket and tossed a tomato at my dress. The soft fruit splashed against my chest. Splat. The soggy wetness spread over my muslin bodice. It smelled vile. Some of the seeds stuck to my cleavage.
I flashed her a wan smile. “But what were they met with? Ridicule and censure.”
“Let the Parisian dressmakers do their bloody jobs,” shouted the heckler as she hurled another tomato at me. Some people laughed as the tomato innards fanned across my dress. She was getting more of a response than I was. As my dress became wetter and wetter and the horrid smell of tomatoes inflamed my nostrils, I forced myself to keep my head held high. I would not let this woman tear me down at a speech designed to lift women up. I spotted Verdana in the front row, shaking her boyish head and wildly gesturing for me to curtail my speech and run for cover.
But I had a different idea, and it was something I had learned from the master—Verdana, herself.
“Madame Tomato,” I shouted at the heckler. Her face turned as red as a tomato under her pink parasol of a hat. “Yes, you.” I pointed at her. “Please come join me on the dais. Come tell us what you bloody well like about the dress code.”
From her chair she pivoted to the audience. “I don’t know,” she said. “It seems to please my husband.”
That earned a big laugh from the crowd.
“Precisely,” I said, sensing the audience swing back to me. “As the great Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, our tight waists and long skirts make us forever dependent on men. Men help us up stairs and down, in the carriage and out, on the horse, up the hill, on and on.” I felt the audience titter, backing me up with a wave of agreement. “Now, here to tell us more about how we can end this state of dependence is the great Verdana Jones, suffrage leader and dedicated advocate for Rational Dress Reform!”
Verdana strode up to the stage and bowed to the audience, which gave her a rousing welcome.
“Ladies,” she boomed. “We are slaves to foreign fashion. Or rather, you are!” She pointed a plump finger at them. Slowly she turned around, modeling her bloomers to the crowd. She pulled on her bloomer pockets, turning them inside out, as she pranced around the stage. “This, my friends, is the answer,” she said, pointing with pride to her giant pantaloons. She twirled about, at ease in her bloomers, while the crowd now cheered her antics. Her bloomers caught the wind and ballooned out like sails beneath her hips as she rocked back on the heels of her boots. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday, the people who wear the pants in the family…are going to actually wear the pants in the family, if you know what I mean.”
The audience burst into appreciative applause and then showered her with a standing ovation. She smiled and took it all in, another shining moment in her brilliant career, as we bowed in unison.
We were a bona fide hit, even here in stodgy, stuffy Newport—and no one could rob us of our feeling of triumph.
Chapter 26
There’s No Accounting for Taste
That evening, I stormed the barricades at home, too. Over the past few days, Lydia had recovered to a great degree, such that neither the doctors nor nurses could devise a single reason why I couldn’t visit with her.
When I knocked on the door, I was actually let in.
She sat up in bed without assistance. The color had returned to her cheeks; and her long hair, which hadn’t been washed in a fortnight, looked matted and dirty but healthier. My heart thumped. She’d recuperate, and now I had a new chance to make things right with her. Between tuberculosis, the plague, influenza, and women dying young from miscarriages, most people never received a second chance. But we had. It was a gift, and I intended to make the most of it.
I propped up some pillows behind her small head and opened the window to let in some fresh air. I sat down a few inches away from her on the bed. I didn’t know if she
was free of contagion, but I figured that if the White Plague were going to attack me, it would have done so already. For whatever reason, I had evaded its tenacious grasp.
“How was your speech?” she asked, sounding remarkably coherent.
I squeezed her tiny hand. “There was a moment when I thought we were doomed…but then I figured out how to rescue the talk.” I reached over, grabbed her silver-backed hairbrush with white boar bristles from her night table, and started to brush out her long, blonde hair. “I asked the woman who kept interrupting to contribute to it—this is the secret of all great leadership.” I tugged at a snarl in her hair. “Keep your enemies close.”
“I’m happy your career is blossoming,” Lydia said.
She looked pleased that I was helping her primp, too.
“And what about yours?” I started to tackle the other side of her hair with its twisted tangles.
Lydia bit her lip. “It’s too early to consider mine. I turn fifteen next week.”
“I know that, silly.” I pivoted her frail torso so that I could tug at a knot in her hair with the brush. “But do you realize that if you marry George Setton, you won’t have a career?”
She looked at me blankly as she leaned her back against the headboard. “My career would be as his wife,” she said, violet eyes glinting.
“If that’s your chosen occupation, you’ll cook for him, sew, run the household, do all the errands, possibly take in boarders, and not be paid one red cent for your efforts. If you ever work outside the home, the only way you’ll be able to claim your earnings is with his express consent. Is that the life you envision for yourself?”
“Oh yes, but with at least five children.” A smile warmed her face. “I want two beautiful girls and at least three boys. And all of them will look up to their Aunt Penelope.”
Before this, I’d always believed there was a reason the word spinster rhymed with splinter. To be a spinster would splinter me off from Society as well as from Love. Happily, the word Aunt carried none of these implications.
Saturday, July 29, 1893
The morning after, Verdana, Sam, and I gathered in the Pink Room for suffrage talk and sweet lemonade. Verdana believed that we had reached the few women in Newport in sympathy with our cause, and that surely the Movement would find more followers in New York. On the off chance that she was wrong, however, she would continue to pay rent on her flat in Boston. This way she’d have a home to return to if need be, whereas I could always move back with Lucinda. This would cut back on the money Verdana would have to spend on a New York flat, she explained in rather surprising detail, and we should view the trip to New York as an experiment. The move would be temporary, and if we hated New York or found the Movement to be unpopular, we would be back in Boston by early fall.
We agreed—we were unanimous about it—it was high time to pack up our belongings and head to New York.
Mother disagreed. She was unanimous about it.
Waving her hands back and forth like a human fan, she ushered me out of the Pink Room, placed her heavy arm around my shoulder, and herded me down the hallway. She pushed me into the dreaded Sewing Room, where a needle and thread hadn’t graced my fingers for months, I realized with a prick of guilt. Cornering me near the Singer sewing machine, she leveled me with her withering stare.
“First you beg us to stay in Newport,” she said. “Then, when your father and I ask you to stay, you can’t leave fast enough. How did I ever raise a daughter to be so contrarian?”
I threw my arms around her. “Thank you for your understanding, Mother.”
She withdrew slightly and brushed one of my red coils away from my face. “Darling, if you must go, I absolutely insist that you take this with you.” She reached into her blue muslin dress and pulled out a Colt .45.
Of all the strange gifts she could present me with—a gun?
“Sorry Mother. I can’t accept this.” In Boston I thought I needed a pistol. But when there was a creative solution—and wasn’t there always?—I preferred it. A tree branch, say. Or my claiming there was a bee when there wasn’t.
Mother sauntered around the Sewing Room, aiming the instrument at various chairs and pincushions as if she were a regular Annie Oakley.
“But of course you can accept my little gift, dear. Not only that, you will. It’s for your own protection. With your father being in the state he is, the day may come when you have to protect yourself.”
“There are ways to do so without resorting to violence,” I said, removing the metal object from her my hand. “I hate guns.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing they don’t hate you.” She chucked. “Oh! You didn’t think I’d heard about Mr. Stalker and his little doll collection? I’m your Mother, Penelope. I know all. Come! Let’s find one of your father’s holsters. I don’t want the damned gun going off by itself.”
Only one item disturbed me about leaving home, but it preyed on me like an itch that wouldn’t quit. I stood outside my parents’ house, plucking the white petals off a daisy’s center yolk and scattering the leaves on my parents’ verdant lawn.
Thoughts swirled. He loves her. He loves her not. He loves her. He loves her not.
A giant yellow butterfly with orange spots landed on a blade of grass and stretched her magnificent wings. That creature was once a lowly caterpillar.
I arrived at the last attached daisy petal, waving in the light breeze. He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t even like her. He’s just using her.
I dashed downtown to the Library, nosed around the stacks, and prepared for what I knew would be my toughest “audience” yet.
Sunday, July 30, 1893, Newport
Father commandeered the head of the table. I sat to his right. Directly across from me throned Mother, light hair pushed up from her face with a diamond tiara Father had purchased in England back when he still had shipping ventures. A purple silk dress from father’s last trip to China swallowed her generous bosom, clasped by a small cameo pin, featuring a woman (who looked a bit like Mother but in profile) against a blue coral background. Powdered and slightly rouged, Mother looked a tad overdressed for any meal featuring George Setton as the guest of honor. Due to Lydia’s recuperation, my imminent departure, and Mother’s predictable unpredictability, the no-visits-on-Sunday rule had been relaxed.
On my right sat the man himself, his prominent hooked nose resembling a toucan’s beak. Across from him sat his future bride Lydia, now almost healthy. Her long, coiled hair had been washed, and her face looked as rosy as it ever had. Next to her sat Sam, whose sarcastic edge had been as dull as a butter knife ever since the day Mr. Daggers tried to accost me. I preferred this softer side of Sam. Across from him perched Verdana, looking happily plumper. Success had imparted a certain glow.
Jesse and Bess’s canvasback ducks with pungent orange sauce met with murmurs of appreciation around the table. The photograph of Abraham Lincoln stared down at me from the fireplace mantel, a reminder to fight for what was right.
I turned to my homely dinner partner. “Tell me, Mr. Setton,” I began.
He scowled, making his nose loom even larger. “Call me George. We’re practically family.”
“Actually that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” I raised my voice so everyone had no choice but to listen.
“Really? About family?” By the way his small eyes sized me up, I could tell he had doubts.
“Indeed.” I sliced the meat off the breastbone and savored a delicious, gamey bite. “I was curious, Mr., uh—George… Have you ever heard of the reform statute of 1848 that allows a married woman to receive and hold personal property?”
“Vaguely.” He eyed me over his fork tines.
“Mother, have you heard of it?” I asked, placing my utensils on the side of my plate. “It’s called the Married Women’s Property Act.”
“Maybe,” she said, with deliberate slowness. “But why don’t you share with us what you’ve learned about it, dear.”
Carpe
diem.
I withdrew a newspaper clipping explaining the Act from my dress pocket. I had taken the precaution of not returning that particular newspaper to the Library and had snipped the article from its surrounding pages.
For Mother, however, reading at the dinner table was a sin on par with soup-slurping. She tapped the tiara on her head three times.
“No reading at the table,” she hissed. “It’s impolite.”
“It is,” I agreed. “It’s tragically impolite.” I drew back my shoulders and raised my voice. “But it’s downright obnoxious to steal someone’s estate from them due to their ignorance of property law.” I held up the clipping and read aloud: “The real property of any female, which she shall own at the time of marriage, shall not be subject to the sole disposal of her husband nor be liable for his debts.” I peered into Mother’s eyes. “Your family owned this house originally, did it not?”
She nodded, and I saw a flash of understanding in her eyes. “Darling, you know that I inherited it when my father tragically passed away. I was barely fifteen. Go on, dear.”
I placed the article on the table and pressed on. “Now, I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that Mother owns the house—not Father—therefore, it’s protected from liability. You don’t need Mr. uh—George over here to ‘rescue you’ from Father’s debts anymore. The house is more or less safe.”
“Bravo!” cheered Verdana, placing a greasy duck leg down on her plate.
She licked her fingers, then clapped her plump hands together as if at a stage performance. “I can see you’ve learned a few things on the suffrage tour.” She wiped her fingers on the napkin “tie” she had tucked into her shirt.
“Well done, Cousin,” Sam said, flashing me a warm smile.
My father glanced at the photograph of Abraham Lincoln and then at me. The glimmerings of a smile played across Father’s face.
