Mistress Suffragette

by Diana Forbes

  “Along with writing and sharing your story, I want to give you another challenge,” she said. “Going forward, dear, I suggest you also bring up your taste level when it comes to men.”

  I silently willed her to be more explicit as I was unsure if she was referring to Mr. Daggers or to every man I knew.

  She opened a window and a gentle breeze wafted in, which made the mowed grass smells inside even more prominent. “It seems very odd to me, dear. You’re a very pretty girl and obviously possess major speaking talents. Verdana saw that immediately and capitalized on it.”

  She walked over to a copper can with a long spout and started watering the tiger lilies. “To speak in public like that takes bravura—a certain amount of confidence,” she said. She stared at the bamboo plants in their vases and didn’t water them. “You also have good, solid writing skills. And yet, when it comes to men, you show an absence of taste and judgment that’s deplorable. Sam Haven, for example, is a weasel.”

  “You know Sam?” I asked.

  She stared at me with a glimmer in her dark eyes. “What did I tell you about Society dowagers?”

  “That it’s their job to know everyone.”

  Amy smiled. “Yes, and I do my job well. Now, Stone Aldrich…”

  My heart stopped. “You know Stone?”

  “Of course, darling. He’s Quincy’s brother.” She gestured to her atrium. “Last year, he was hanging around here almost as much as Quincy.”

  I’d had no idea Stone was so involved in the Movement. In fact he’d acted as if he knew nothing about the cause.

  “Which one of them is the better artist?” I asked, looking to her for guidance.

  “They’re both good—they just have completely different visions of what art is.”

  “Is Quincy more in the right, though?”

  “No. They’re just two brothers who don’t get along. But Stone loves Katharine. Haven’t you learned something about staying away from other women’s men?” Amy approached me and squeezed my arm, her favorite technique for getting her way. “Why not let those two find their way back to each other, and concentrate on Quincy? I see the way he looks at you. And any man who can’t stop painting a woman is already half in love with her.”

  That was something I’d almost missed during the whole Mr. Daggers debacle. Quincy had often sat near me during meetings, coaxing a laugh, talking about the subjects he painted, and encouraging my ideas. But I’d not considered him a suitor.

  She winked. “And to think, Quincy’s the only man that your mother hasn’t explicitly tried to match you up with.”

  “You know that she approved of Mr. Daggers, then?”

  “I know she thought he’d be able to support you—and her—in a manner she’d find agreeable. But it looks like the particular lifestyle he was advocating was pretty distasteful. Whose life are you living dear, hers or yours?”

  Mine. I was living my life, and there was no time like the present to start living it the way I wanted.

  I hugged her again in spite of her protestations. “Thank you, Amy, for giving me a second chance.”

  Epilogue

  Friday, January 1, 1897, Manhattan, NY

  I started writing my story the very next morning. I quickly learned that, even with Amy Van Buren’s backing, I needed to keep the word count down if I wanted to find a legitimate publisher, so certain items, like Verdana and Sam’s wedding, were not included.

  The couple officially joined forces that December as the Jones-Havens, which confused absolutely everyone. Verdana and Sam had a ceremony in Boston; they wrote over twenty vows apiece and made their guests stand out in the freezing cold for over an hour to listen to every last one of them. Verdana wore white lace bloomers and a veil.

  Once the couple returned from their honeymoon in New Zealand, Sam, who’d finally completed his Harvard studies, pursued a higher calling and helped me edit my book. Verdana traveled to Boston once a month to start a suffrage museum in her old flat. Both men and women now paid money to see her collection, which kept us in bustles, bloomers, and Shepherd’s Pie.

  Mr. Daggers did not disappear from my life entirely. He developed a bad habit of showing up at my apartment uninvited. But I’d finally found a weapon that worked: one that could be trapped and kept for opportune moments. However, my publisher asked me to cut the final time I saw Mr. Daggers, as it involved a bee stinging him on his silver tongue. This was considered too racy for modern readers, already on edge due to the long, drawn out Panic.

  In between her increased editorial responsibilities and his illustrator responsibilities at Harper’s Weekly, Katharine and Stone somehow found an hour to get married downtown in the civil courts on a snowy, blustery day during the fall of ’96. As her maid of honor, I swear I wasn’t jealous of the man she’d chosen, only of the diamond—a four-carat, luminous, yellow gem in the same shade as a sunflower (and almost as large).

  But then Katharine had the audacity to move out of the Windermere and into a sprawling, thirty-nine-room mansion on Millionaire’s Row that he purchased with the proceeds from his successful art deal.

  Now, that made me jealous.

  Not wanting to let a perfectly lovely apartment go to total strangers, Katharine insisted that I move into the Windermere with Sam and Verdana, along with a fourth—their little girl. At almost three years old, young Vie was already starting to take on some of her mother’s characteristics. She’d run around the octagonal parlor, clamoring for attention by babbling nonstop. She had inherited Verdana’s red hair, Sam’s pale blue eyes, and five loving adopted “aunts” who doted on her mercilessly, counting Katharine, Amy, Lucinda, Lydia, and me.

  In spite of her best efforts, Lucinda decided that she despised declensions and had had more than enough of them at the Girls’ Latin School in Boston. When she visited me over a holiday, I introduced her to Amy, who instantly took a shine to her. As I moved up in the ranks, Lucinda took over my old role, and I taught her many of the things I’d learned along the way. She moved into a rooming house on Second Avenue in the 70s, and we met at Amy’s every day without fail.

  My sister enrolled in a women’s college upstate called Vassar, but true to form, barely studied. Instead, Lydia would duck out of her tests and come visit me. Together, we’d spend hours walking up Ladies’ Mile so she could gape at the department store windows, now showcasing more and more of those hideous, ready-made dresses. She and I had finally forged a close sisterly bond. And, having survived her near-fatal encounters with both tuberculosis and George Setton, she was less inclined to fall into the arms of the first available suitor, or even the second, third, or fourth one. I knew I’d have her near me for a long time.

  Lydia and I continued to see Mother and Father in Newport for major holidays and birthdays, but I think she and I both felt that we’d found our “true family” in New York. Amy acted like an adopted mother to both of us; Verdana was like an older, wackier sister; and Sam was still Sam. My father remained a bit absent even when he was present, and the rebirth of his shipping business did not bring him any closer to me. But, considering the father figures I’d encountered along the way, I ultimately decided I didn’t need one.

  Before I joined the Suffrage Movement, I’d always thought of “home” as a physical place. And even once the Gilded Age had passed, (and even saying the words Gilded Age would quickly dampen a conversation) Newport was a gorgeous place to live. But gradually, I came to realize that, for me, “home” meant living near those to whom I felt closest. My home was with my friends and the Movement leaders. They lived in Manhattan, and therefore, so did I.

  I was busy revising the seventh draft of my memoir when the telephone jangled, startling me from that delightful feeling of quiet concentration I’d experience whenever I wrote anything.

  “Penelope, darling, how are you?” My mother’s unmistakable voice cut like a knife through the phone static. She sounded frustrated. “This is your mother. How come you never call me?”

 
“I was just about to ring you,” I fibbed. “Happy New Year.”

  “Yes, it is a new year. I was just sitting here thinking that it’s time for you to get married.”

  “Mother,” I said in my cease-and-desist tone.

  “Don’t ‘Mother’ me. Verdana’s married. Sam’s married.”

  “Yes, they are. To each other.”

  “Katharine’s married. Stone’s married.”

  “That’s another couple, Mother.”

  “Darling, one day your hair will fade—and you’ll be all alone.”

  I glanced at Mr. Daggers’s pocket watch that I’d never bothered to return. I thought of it as “insurance”—just in case the book failed and I needed to pay rent.

  “Penelope?” she said, tapping her end of the telephone with her nail. “Are you still there? I bought the most adorable basset hound, darling, so we won’t have to rent a dog for the Dogs’ Dinner this summer…”

  I was still on the line, but only half-listening because Quincy had just walked into the parlor. As my mother continued to advise me on the many things I was doing wrong with my life, staying unattached being the paramount one, he leaned over Verdana’s typewriter and yanked the page I was working on out of the jaws. He started reading it.

  After she rung off, he turned to me. His blue-black eyes shone, as he joined me at the large oval table in the center of the room.

  “There’s a problem,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I know,” I said, “I hate Mistress Suffragette,” referring to the new, jazzier book title the publisher advocated. (“Mistresses sell,” he’d assured me, stroking my arm in a most ungentlemanly way.)

  Quincy looked at me quizzically.

  “I wanted to title it The Accidental Suffragist, or Love and Panic, or Be a Suffragist, Not a Mistress, but the editor said—”

  “No,” Quincy said with a slight frown. “There’s a problem with the ending.”

  “Ending?”

  “Yes,” he said, gently tapping his vest pocket. “The ending of your book.” He sighed as he laid the page down on the table.

  “It’s a memoir. I have no control over the ending. It is what it is.”

  “Oh, it’s accurate enough,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s just not happy enough.”

  I cocked my head at him and started ticking off on my fingers.

  “Verdana marries Sam.” He nodded. “And Katharine marries your brother,” I said.

  He grimaced and nodded. He and Stone had patched their relations, but like a sweater with patches, the fabric threatened to unravel at any moment. Perhaps it was because Stone still accused Quincy of selling out, even though Stone’s paintings fetched much higher sums.

  “Verdana has a child,” I continued. “An adorable one,” I yelled out, just in case young Vie was listening. At three, children are very impressionable.

  “Yes,” he said, “but what about the author?”

  “She’s gained her independence,” I said, gesturing to the room. “She earns a good salary. She’s a public speaker. Her first book is getting published. She’s very happy, especially about the book.”

  “No marriage for her, then?” he asked with a grin.

  I shook my head.

  He crossed his arms. “So, even though she’s independent, she won’t ask the man she loves to marry her? Why not? Would that make her too happy, do you think? I mean, for modern readers?”

  My forehead erupted in patches of heat. I coiled a lock of my hair around my finger and stared at it. The color was still red, although maybe Mother was right. Perhaps it was starting to fade just a little.

  “I do think it’s our turn, you know,” I said quietly, looking down at the Remington Number 2 and grabbing one of Sam’s initialed handkerchiefs to mop my brow.

  Quincy reached into his vest pocket and removed a small velvet box. “I thought you’d never ask.” He handed me the box. “Tell me what you think of this.”

  Inside, a small canary diamond shone, casting its sunny rays on the pristine white walls around us. I slipped the ring on my finger and met his lips with mine.

  I reached for a fountain pen and, picking up the last page of the manuscript, jotted down a thought.

  Is it better to be independent? Or in love?

  I looked at Quincy.

  Yes.

  The End

  Note from the Author

  The Panic of 1893 was the greatest depression in the United States before the Great Depression. Overnight, banks shuttered, companies failed, and the government floundered. People lost their livelihoods. Family fortunes, meticulously amassed over generations, vanished faster than wisps of smoke.

  1893 was also a watershed year for this country due to the confluence of the Chicago Exposition and a surge of new interest in the American Women’s Suffrage Movement. In 1893, Colorado adopted woman’s suffrage. With the Progressive Movement now in full bloom, women from all classes and backgrounds started to enter public life.

  Certain real-life events were moved back in time in my novel so that the narrative could all take place during this pivotal year. For example, the women’s suffrage parade in New York City actually occurred later while the newspaper-burning incident never happened.

  I put my own fictional twist on other events. For example, only one painting from the Ash Can school actually features a trash can, but I sparked to the idea of my protagonist helping her love interest search for trash cans as artistic subject matter.

  An early reader of this book demanded that I change the name of the party at Chateau-sur-Mer from the Memorial Day Ball to the Decoration Day Ball, but because the holiday was called by both names for many years, I decided to leave the name alone.

  The characters are all fictional, but some were inspired by real people who lived during the time period. For example, the Amy Adams Buchanan Van Buren character has more than a hint of the real-life Alva Vanderbilt in her mix, and so my character is allowed to live on 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue with a parlor featuring a naked goddess ceiling and a Marie Antoinette desk. The story of how she forced her daughter to sleep with a steel rod is true. But my character’s participation in the Women’s Suffrage Movement takes place before Alva Vanderbilt’s involvement with it, and in any case is heavily fictionalized.

  The Stone Aldrich character was loosely inspired by the Ash Can artist, John Sloan, although numerous facts and personality traits were altered while others were added to my character’s mix.

  I spent many hours retracing the steps of my protagonist. If the buildings still exist, I visited them. I also read newspapers, diaries, and nonfiction books from the era, in an effort to capture the sound of the language. I did take some liberties. I used apostrophes more than they were used at the time to help the reader feel more connected to the inner thoughts inside the protagonist’s head.

  Once I had the plot fixed in my own head, our nation plunged into the worst recession I have experienced in my lifetime to date—the financial crisis of ’08-’09. This further informed some of the characters’ actions and enabled me to truly walk in my protagonist’s shoes.

  I am fortunate in that I possess a box of photographs and letters from this era—artifacts passed down in my family. My ancestors overcame (or in some cases, became unraveled by) their own financial challenges in the same three American cities as my characters during the year 1893. To those women and men in my family, long deceased, who handed down their stories, and to you, the readers of my debut novel, I am truly grateful.

  Diana Forbes

  About the Author

  Diana Forbes

  Diana Forbes is a ninth-generation American, with ancestors on both sides of the Civil War. One of her most traumatic childhood memories was of her mother putting up a family heirloom for sale—an autographed photograph of President Abraham Lincoln—against Diana’s strenuous objections. After her Mom also sold all of her great-great-grandparents’ furniture, along with signed letters from President Lincoln that had been in
the family for generations, Diana decided that she could preserve the past by becoming either a pack rat or a writer. (Somehow becoming a writer seemed the more noble pursuit.)

  Today Diana Forbes considers herself a literary archaeologist, digging for untold stories against the rich backdrop of American history. In a box of letters from her ancestors that she managed to salvage, Diana discovered that two of her forebears were tailors who lost their jobs back when ready-made dresses from department stores started to replace old-fashioned dressmaking. This hooked Diana on researching the dark side of Industrialization and a little known offshoot of the women’s Suffrage Movement called “the Rational Dress Movement.” Ladies: it was not so very long ago that women had to fight…to wear trousers!

  Diana’s firsthand experience during the financial crisis of ’08-’09, as she watched friend after friend lose their livelihoods during the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, inspired her to seek another time in American history that presented economic woes for her characters. But having a good sense of humor helps them grapple with the dark forces that beset them.

  Diana counts among her influences the Jeeves series by P.G. Wodehouse, the zaniness of Lucille Ball, and screwball comedies such as Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

  Mistress Suffragette is Diana Forbes’s debut novel. Prior to its publication, Mistress Suffragette was recognized with a number of awards and honors: it won first place in the Missouri Romance Writers of America (RWA) “Gateway to the Best” contest in Women’s Fiction and was a Wisconsin Romance Writers of America (RWA) “Fab Five” finalist in Women’s Fiction. A selection from the novel also placed fourth in Historical Fiction in the Central Ohio RWA “Ignite The Flame” contest. Mistress Suffragette was also shortlisted for both the Chatelaine awards and the Somerset awards.