Mistress Suffragette

by Diana Forbes

“That’s all very interesting, dear,” Verdana blurted. She rubbed her thumb against her index finger. “But I take my direction from the New England Dress Reform Committee.”

  “And where do you suppose they get the money to pay their speakers?” Amy asked, crossing her arms.

  The silence was so loud that I thought it would shatter the chandelier drops.

  I turned to our hostess. “Do you really think we should speak, or do you think we should organize a parade instead?” I asked, suddenly flush with the concept. “In a parade, no one would have a voice. Yet we’d all appear to stand together.”

  “A parade?” she echoed.

  She had trouble concealing her excitement when an immense hat wasn’t shielding her face. The creases around her once-pert mouth eased, and now she looked ten years younger—almost resembling the young socialite from South Carolina who had knocked New York’s Old Money on its overstuffed ass.

  “An interesting notion,” Amy admitted. She twisted her alleged fifteen-carat diamond ring around her left finger, temporarily blinding us with the dazzling light from the flashy yellow gem. “Why I’d love to see a parade march down Fifth Avenue. We’d be pioneers—female knights for our cause.”

  “It’s a good way of papering over our differences,” I said, pointing my index finger first at Verdana, then at Amy, and then to me. “No one need speak. We’d present a united front—at least to all appearances, we would. We could all march. Just imagine: it would look like we had a veritable army on our side.”

  Amy clapped. Her hands reminded me of castanets, rhythmically clicking, clacking, and snapping to underscore her every whim. “The idea is pure genius.” Punctuating her approval, she rang a small silver bell for her servants to enter and take our drink orders.

  Verdana slowly nodded, but her face appeared pouty. She glanced at me, then looked over at Amy, finally pointing to herself.

  “Just remember that she’s my business manager, Amy, dearest,” Verdana said. “Don’t even think about stealing her.”

  The grand patroness flashed me a tight, hard smile, looking as if she just might consider it if agitated enough by an unruly subject wearing bloomers.

  As I left her home with Verdana to make the long trek down to Orchard Street, I peppered her with questions about being a business manager. What did the new title mean? What would my new responsibilities entail?

  She informed me that she’d promoted me on the spot, simply because the title sounded impressive.

  Wednesday, August 9, 1893

  The notion of a parade grew and grew, until the idea became so big and unwieldy and exciting that it ensnared us all. My chest couldn’t stop swelling. The leaders embraced my ideas. I was no longer a cog in the suffrage machine.

  We wrote leaflets and took turns handing them out to women along Fifth Avenue. We sent invitations to suffragist groups in Boston, Chicago, Rochester, and Philadelphia. We created signs to carry. Some of the messages were about Rational Dress; others were about the female vote; and a few were about enfranchising black men.

  We fed the fire in our bellies with tea and crumpets.

  I sent word to my parents, telling them of my parade plans, and asked Mother to invite her friends. I wrote to Lucinda, begging her to come, although I had no couch to offer her. And secretly, I wrote to Stone as well, though I had only his New York address. I wanted him to unravel the great mystery between him and the brother he had failed to mention. Who was the good brother? Who was the bad brother? And why had he forgotten to speak of his handsome sibling who seemed—or was I just imagining it?—that perhaps Art did not monopolize his every waking hour?

  My letter was barely two sentences. I alerted him that I was living in New York down on Orchard Street and organizing a parade. I deliberately omitted that I’d bumped into Katharine and his brother at Amy Van Buren’s house, and that we were all working together.

  Monday, August 14, 1893

  On Amy’s orders, we wore hats decorated with purple lilies and traditional dress to the suffrage parade—even Verdana. Despite the fashionable shoes and long skirt, she looked no daintier. Unused to walking in a skirt with masses of petticoats underneath, she trudged, almost as if she were making a special point of moving as slowly as possible.

  Mary, Madeleine, and Midge sported pastel parasols, which infuriated our self-appointed leader.

  “Who are these garden party suffragists?” I heard Amy mutter, as she forcibly pried the sun umbrellas out of their hands.

  She put her enforcers on parasol patrol. Parasols were brusquely removed from their owners and sent back to her home with her trusted footmen. It was clear that she wanted all hands free to carry the signs we’d made.

  The parade began in the fashionable area down on 9th Street and Fifth Avenue and ended far uptown on 66th Street and Fifth, alongside that manmade wilderness known as Central Park. In total, a hundred women showed up—most from New York, a dozen from faraway Rochester, and one or two from Philadelphia, even on such short notice. Amy, Verdana, Quincy, and I registered the marchers at a table with purple and yellow suffrage streamers. Each woman then chose a sign to carry that captured her fancy (or most closely resembled her views as to what we were marching for). Verdana, who’d defended her right to wear bloomers for hours only to capitulate to Amy’s traditional dress mandate in the end, chose a poster about Rational Dress. Some of the more militant mid-level women gravitated to the posters about enfranchising black men. The anti-tipplers wore black and carried Temperance posters. A few women picked up posters about improving women’s wages; and while my sentiments were with them, I felt Votes for Women was the more Amy-approved choice. I picked up a Votes for Women placard: it was the one area most of the assembled women agreed on.

  From the inside, we were fractured—always fighting about which direction we should take. But from the outside, I thought we appeared unified: an army of women who believed in a handful of linked causes.

  Amy’s army sported large dresses and even larger hats. Yellow sashes added a sartorial flourish to our uniform.

  Once registration was over, Amy handed the organizers handkerchiefs doused in violet perfume—to drown out any stench, she explained. She held a scented hankie up to her nose to demonstrate, and we all emulated her. Then, reeking of real lilies from our hats and fake violets from our kerchiefs, we brought up the rear flank of the parade.

  Even the weather behaved. We were fortunate it didn’t rain, as some of our signs were flimsy and hastily put together. And, without a breeze to disrupt the splendid day, our hats even stayed on our heads. We marched quietly, in clean, straight lines. Things proceeded smoothly for the first two flanks but, alas, not for the rear guard.

  At 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, the trouble started.

  A mare reared up and kicked, breaking the wooden stays and pulling free from her carriage. As the loose mare created chaos, a group of carriages returning their horses to stables on West 44th Street blocked all traffic. The escaped horse zigged between some of the carriages, then stood on her hind legs as several drivers leapt from their vehicles and tried to catch her. The chaotic hurly-burly of shouted directions and noise made the horse go crazier. She whinnied, shook her mane, and bared her teeth.

  Some of the men working in the area, horse hands and others, applauded the escaped horse and jeered at us. I heard Verdana hiss at our party to look straight ahead and keep marching. But we couldn’t. We were all stopped, pinned in place, as several smartly dressed riders emerged from the abandoned carriage in confusion. The horse galloped around the thoroughfare neighing uncontrollably.

  Two men on the sidelines leapt into our crowd and started threatening some of the female marchers. As one red-faced man, wearing britches and reeking of bourbon, proceeded to paw Katharine’s clothed bosom with his bare hands, Quincy and I shoved him off.

  “Watch out for the horse,” Quincy cried.

  I ducked out of the way, scanning the animal for a detached stirrup, rein, or other makeshift
weapon. There weren’t any.

  The rough man glared at me with evil intent and, undeterred, leapt toward his chosen target. He fondled Katharine, who, rather than screaming, had frozen into a sort of statue of herself.

  “Get away, you brute,” I shouted, punching him in the gut. He stumbled back. But a moment later, he was at her again.

  “Sticks and stones, bitch,” he yelled at me.

  “I don’t think you heard the lady,” Quincy said to the stranger. Quincy grabbed the man’s shoulder from behind, spun him around, and punched him on the jaw.

  Wobbling and red-faced, but determined, he lunged at Katharine a third time.

  “What do ye expect?” he screamed. “Don’t be bringing ladies into these parts unless you’re prepared to face the consequences.”

  “Grab his arms,” I yelled.

  Quincy caught them and held them behind the stranger’s back. The man kicked Quincy in the shins. The two men, both just under six feet tall with medium builds, were superb fighters. A bitter scuttle ensued, but Quincy would not let go.

  At long last, the attacker collapsed. He looked worn out, possibly dazed from too much liquor. Quincy pushed him back into the crowd with a curt, “Keep your distance, brother.”

  We then devoted our attention to the second fondler, who had chosen the one woman capable of handling any man: Verdana. She punched him in the face several times, then proceeded to knee him in the groin. He wilted away amid sobbing groans.

  In time, the escaped horse was caught and reattached to its carriage, and our parade proceeded. At 66th Street, we compared notes with the other marchers. Incidents of random men jumping into the crowd to fondle the women had only happened to our group. No one was harmed, but Katharine and two of the other accosted women appeared shaken. Verdana offered to escort the three victims to their respective apartments while I walked back to the mansion on 52nd Street with about half of the assembled marchers. Amy led the front. I was close to the rear, out of breath but still standing.

  I knew he was trailing me by a few yards because I couldn’t help but notice him wherever he was. His resemblance to Stone Aldrich was uncanny. His voice, his laugh, and his build were all so similar to his brother’s that it was as if I already knew Quincy quite well. However, his style of dress was not as refined as Stone’s. Instead of jackets, he favored vests, lending him a professorial look that was more creative than lawyerly.

  “Penelope—slow down,” he said, now only a few strides behind me. “What a tremendous parade. You should be proud, seeing how it was all your idea.”

  I bit my lip. “I wanted it to keep the peace,” I said. “But what did it cause? Confusion and despair.”

  Quincy patted me on the back. “Don’t be hard on yourself. We hit a few bumps in the road. We’ll figure it out for next time. If we did everything right the first time around, there’d be nothing to learn.”

  He was now by my side. He smelled of leather, tobacco, and sweat. I could get used to that smell. But should I? What if he just wanted to paint all day long? That would be very selfish of him.

  We stopped as two horse-drawn fire engines raced each other down Fifth Avenue. They were soon joined by hundreds of cows stampeding down the thoroughfare, off to one of the East Side slaughterhouses. Mooing and neighing filled the air: there was always a parade of some kind in Manhattan. My heart went out to the cows.

  “By the way,” he continued, “where d’ya learn to fight like that?” He did a mock impersonation of me punching the attacker.

  “I taught myself.” I thought about Mr. Daggers—how I’d fended him off. I glanced at my hands. Maybe I was the weapon, and any additional object only a prop.

  Admiration danced in Quincy’s eyes. “That’s good. You’re strong. Katharine’s so weak. If we hadn’t been there…” He didn’t finish the thought.

  “Do you think she’ll be all right?” I glanced at fledgling trees dotting the park on the west side of Fifth Avenue. I longed to stroll through that oasis of calm, but I could see Amy just ahead holding seven stray parasols in one hand and wildly motioning to us with another parasol like an over-agitated drum major. I brought her violet-scented handkerchief up to my nose, settling for the fragrance of fake flowers over real.

  Quincy swung his arm jauntily. “Katharine’s a working woman. She’ll put on a brave face.”

  “I hope you’re right. I admire her. Though I wish we’d met under different circumstances.”

  He caught my arm. “Believe me, she was bowled over by the kindness you and your mother showed my brother. I think she just worried he may have started to have feelings for you.”

  “Well, he didn’t,” I heard my voice snap. “Not any real feelings.”

  He frowned a question mark. “Sorry. Did I touch a nerve?”

  “Your brother waited for several weeks to inform me that Art was his only mistress. Then it turned out that he was involved with someone here in New York. What sort of a person does that?”

  “Stone Aldrich,” we said together.

  I turned to Quincy. “You remind me of him.”

  “That’s very unfair,” he said. “And, just so we’re clear, I do not have a mistress.”

  “Physically, I mean.” I could feel my cheeks tingle with embarrassment.

  “Oh.” He paused. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  I shouldn’t be so angry at him. He wasn’t his brother’s keeper. And it wasn’t his fault that he looked exactly like him. It was just a most unfortunate coincidence. “Are there other brothers?”

  He shook his head. Well, at least part of Stone’s story was true.

  “Is he much younger than you?”

  He cocked his head, a Stone gesture. “Two years. But psychologically—”

  “And why does he deny your existence? You seem pleasant enough.”

  He laughed—how I wished it weren’t Stone’s laugh.

  “He thinks I sold out. Hates that I still do portraits and won’t paint city scenes with beggars in them. The last time he and I spoke, we had a horrible quarrel. And he said I was ‘dead to him.’” Quincy pointed to himself. “You can see, I think, that I’m very much alive.”

  I looked at him, wondering if I could bring these two back together. And if I should succeed, would my life improve or worsen? Did I want two Stone Aldrichs in my life, or was I better off with none?

  Above us, a canopy of blue stretched, unmarred by even a fluffy cloud. A thrush from Central Park flew overhead. A wealthy drug manufacturer had recently introduced all of the songbirds mentioned in Shakespeare to Central Park, and I smiled, happy that at least one of these birds had survived the new terrain. Still, songbirds were supposed to travel in pairs. Where was the thrush’s mate?

  “When was the last time you spoke?” I asked.

  “Last year when I sold my first portrait to a museum. He refused to come see it. He’s fond of saying, ‘contemporary success is artistic failure.’”

  I stopped walking and looked at him pointedly. “Well, is it?”

  The brown suede vest he wore appeared shopworn.

  “Nah. He’s a great painter, but he’s ahead of our time. Take my word, he’d love to make a living in the arts. We both would.”

  He withdrew a pipe from his vest pocket. He lit the small wooden bowl and a pungent cherry tobacco flavor sweetened the air. It smelled more genteel than the putrid, foreign cigars Stone smoked. Quincy passed me the pipe.

  I drew on it. The smoky flavor calmed me, giving me a lovely medicinal feeling of numb. I passed the handle back to him.

  He looked down at his shoes where small holes had started to form in the toes. “At various times, Stone’s accused me at of sucking on the teat of the Gilded class. I don’t know what in the Devil he’s talking about. I’m an artist. I don’t make a lot of money. So, if Amy asks me to paint fusty portraits, I do it. And gratefully.” He dropped into a gallant half bow, as if he were asking me to dance with him at a ball. “Of course, if you’d allo
w me to paint your portrait, I’d be most honored.”

  I thought about how proud my mother would be that Quincy had asked to paint me without being prodded.

  “Fine,” I agreed, “on one condition. You can only paint me as me. I won’t allow you to turn me into a prostitute or an urchin.”

  “Thank you,” he said, bowing, “and I would never.”

  He scratched at some scruff on his chin. Stone would never sport a three-day old beard. Still, Quincy had just fended off an attacker with his bare hands, whereas his sibling had been too cowardly to tell me he was a Socialist. Perhaps there were some differences.

  As we strolled down the beautiful stretch of Fifth Avenue with pristine Central Park flanking the west side, I wondered why family strife always came down to money. My father had practically disowned me for not sending him my earnings and had yet to thank me for saving their house. My sister had been willing to marry for money three years before her prime—and to the vilest man in the universe.

  This was what the Movement should focus on. It wasn’t so much about a particular style of dress. And, of course, we deserved the vote. But we also needed to guarantee that we could be independent—financially independent—from men. We should worry about women working and getting paid for it; about being able to hold on to our wages and our property. And about knowing the applicable laws. If we could somehow get women to stand on their own financially, I was certain the rest would follow.

  We watched a few more cows being herded down the Avenue to their imminent death.

  “Do you—er—share your brother’s eating restrictions?”

  He chuckled. “Yes, but for different reasons. I hate lobster, and I’ve never tasted camel. Being Jewish is part of my cultural heritage, but I’m not as devout as he is.”

  He jerked his thumb to indicate the temple uptown, a giant Romanesque building with an oversized dome. “Would you like to attend synagogue with me sometime?”

  I was familiar with the building. It looked vaguely Moorish. And intimidating.

  “Will they allow me in?”