If I Never Get Back

by Darryl Brock

  We hired a hack and toured the white-fronted palaces of consumerism along the fashionable “Ladies’ Mile.” There, lavishly outfitted women left liveried coachmen to wait while they shopped in Lord & Taylor’s emporium at Twentieth or Arnold Constable’s at Nineteenth, both having recently opened their pale marble facades to the public.

  I told Twain I wanted to visit a state-of-the-art department store. He chose A. T. Stewart’s cast-iron palace at Ninth, just east off Broadway. Its exterior white metal, ornately sculpted, was designed to look like marble. Blue awnings shaded the window displays. Inside, the scale was grandiose. Eight floors spanned two and a half acres. Two thousand employees dispensed stock to meet life’s physical requisites, from baby clothes to funereal “black goods.” A central rotunda framed an enormous domed skylight. A double staircase linked all floors. An organ played solemnly—appropriate, I thought, for a marketplace shrine.

  We looked in on the vast sewing room, an entire floor, where rows of women—more than nine hundred—hand-stitched every bit of clothing sold in the store. Noticing that they didn’t work from patterns, I questioned the floor manager, a silk-hatted martinet who gave me a fishy look and informed me that not only did no such absurdity exist, but that Stewart’s was far too exclusive to consider it.

  “Forget about airplanes,” I told Twain. “Just market paper sewing patterns all over the country.”

  “Do I look prize fool enough to try ‘n’ get any two females to make the same thing?” He snorted. “It’d never work.”

  With some surprise I saw women among the clerks at Stewart’s. Until then I’d seen only men employed in stores. Hiring women, Twain said, began during the war, when manpower was short. Girls also worked among Stewart’s two hundred cash children. They were very young and looked poor and tired. No wonder. They worked fourteen hours a day.

  “Aren’t there any child-labor laws?” I asked Twain.

  “Not to speak of,” he said. “That a fault?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “But if there were, how’d I’ve learned my printing trade? My father died when I was ten. I left school and went to work—and then my true education commenced. How would you have it different?”

  I didn’t know. Without social legislation, few choices existed.

  We lunched in a basement saloon off Printing House Square. Thick pork loin sandwiches, wedges of cheese, fried oysters—tasty and absolutely free, but so salty that a number of nickel beers were required to wash it all down; no fools, the pub owners.

  Afterward we strolled through City Hall Park, where the Tribune and Times buildings stood side by side. Excavation was under way at the southern end for an enormous new post office. We sat on a bench and enjoyed the scene. Birds sang in the trees. Squirrels chattered. Children laughed and screamed. Strolling couples bought balloons, checked their weight on scales, peered through telescopes, and blew into a strange-looking contraption that measured lung strength.

  “Hokey pokey, penny a lump!” cried a vendor.

  “What’s he selling?” I said. “Coal?”

  Twain looked at me sidelong. “Ice cream, you saphead.”

  I bought two cups of sherbet. “Hey,” I said to the vendor, a stick-thin boy, “You know ‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!’?”

  “Oh, ain’t you the trump,” he said, giving me a withering look. “That’s precious old, mister.” At least the sherbet was good.

  The foot of Broadway resounded with a welter of languages. Peddlers abounded. Knife grinders rang bells and pushed their carts. Barefoot children stood beside steaming pots shouting “Here’s sweet hot corn!” Others shouted, “Roasted peanuts!” and “Strawberries, fine, ripe, and red!” Still others hawked apples, flowers, pencils; one even had french fries—“Saratoga potatoes”—and I bought some eagerly, the first I’d encountered. Everywhere we were besieged with cries of “Blackin’, sir? Shine, sir?”

  “Every street arab buys a brush and foot box,” Twain grumbled, “and sets up boot-blacking.”

  Over the sidewalks hung meat and poultry crawling with flies. We skirted cut-rate furniture and dry goods piled on the walks. Rank odors came from tables of smoked meats and fish, decaying fruit and vegetables. Twain said most of it had likely been picked off the ground at the Fulton and Washington markets. Pointing to ragpickers trudging behind small dog-drawn carts, he informed me that they had to pay license fees, yet some made as much as seven dollars a week and bought farms out West. I didn’t believe it.

  “‘Ere you, mister!” An urchin girl poked matches at me. I bought a penny parcel—and threw them down when I saw lice crawling on my fingers. In the Alger novels of this time, I remembered, ragged kids got ahead through luck and pluck—saving a rich child from drowning or returning a fat wallet—but these sniveling, rot-toothed waifs looked too malnourished to save anyone, especially themselves. And a wallet dropped here would vanish in microseconds.

  “Something’s got to be done about these kids,” I said to Twain as we moved on.

  He snorted. “There’s a mortal confusion now of workhouses, jails, charity asylums, hospitals—all for the unfortunate.”

  “Shouldn’t the government take responsibility for people’s welfare?”

  “You’ll never make that old cat fight,” he retorted. “The people are responsible for their own welfare.”

  “But those kids are living on pennies!”

  “How’s the government at fault? Look, Sam, here they got a chance to make their mark. Sure, some’ll end up as ragged bummers, some as flash girls. But they all had a chance. That’s it. Why you think so many come pouring in here from all over creation?”

  I shut up. What struck me as basically harsh struck him as basically fair—at least as fair as anything else.

  Bumping back up Broadway in a coach, we halted behind a crew paving over the cobblestones with asphalt. My eye was caught by a theater marquee across the street. Niblo’s Garden proclaimed the presence of LYDIA THOMPSON’S BRITISH BLONDES! I asked Twain about it.

  “They put clipper-built girls up on the stage, prancing with barely clothes enough on to be tantalizing.” He confessed that he’d seen the first of the leg shows, The Black Crook, at Niblo’s three years before. “Since then, imported blondes have become all the rage. But it’s still the scenery and tights that’re everything—except for one new blonde who’s supposed to be a genuine dazzler.”

  “Elise Holt?”

  “That’s the one. How’d you know?”

  I explained where I’d seen her. He drew me out with questions, and I found myself telling him about Morrissey, McDermott, Le Caron, the money, the shooting—everything.

  “Whew,” he said. “Morrissey’s not to trifle with, and them others don’t brace me up either. You carrying that gun?”

  I patted my coat pocket.

  “I had no thought of being teamed with such a desperate character,” he said, stoking his pipe. “Feels like Virginia City all over.”

  We started moving. Near Fifth Street, Twain suddenly pointed at the facade of a small building beside the Metropolitan Hotel.

  *** WAVERLY THEATRE ***

  *** THREE DAYS ONLY ***

  *** PARIS or THE JUDGEMENT ***

  *** ELISE HOLT BURLESQUE TROUPE ***

  “Jesus, that’s her,” I said excitedly. “Think we can get tickets?” “Pretty late for a Friday,” he said. “I’ll see to it tomorrow. Strikes me that a dedicated journalist should make every effort to stay abreast of things. So to speak.” He shot me a look from under his eyebrows.

  “Bear in mind that by no stretch would this ever be a fit topic for Livy’s ears.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  Next morning I got a note from Twain saying that business had occupied him, but he’d meet me that night at the theater. Feeling at loose ends, I wrote a letter to my daughters telling them that even if I missed their birthdays—Hope would turn five early in July, Susy three a few weeks later—I lov
ed them and would come home as soon as I could. I included their zip code in the address just in case, put a three-cent stamp on the envelope, walked it to the post office—no mailboxes yet—and dropped it through a slot, feeling silly and yet closer to them.

  By the time I strolled up Broadway in my black evening suit, my spirits had rebounded. I’d slicked my hair, scrubbed my teeth with Burnett’s Oriental Tooth Wash, and put on gleaming new high-laced shoes. Around me throngs of people stepped briskly in the deepening dusk, speaking in animated voices. Lamps from theaters and concert saloons splashed the sidewalks with brilliant colors. Bursts of music and applause floated from lobbies. The lamplighters were out with their ladders, making the streetlights glowing yellow balls. Stagecoaches’ lights of red, green, and blue formed tracers as they bumped over the cobblestones. Excitement bubbled in me. I was on my way to the theater. With Mark Twain, no less.

  He stood in the lobby of the Waverly, natty in tails, silk stovepipe, and polished gaiters, surrounded by admirers. When I pushed close he muttered, “Let’s clear out.”

  Our seats occupied a small gilt-framed box flanking the stage. The Waverly’s interior was intimate—cramped, to be less poetic—all its surfaces festooned with draperies and gilt molding. In the orchestra seats were a few fat burghers whose overdressed wives looked self-conscious in the mostly male audience. The fifty-cent sections were boisterous. The house held about three hundred, and standing room was vanishing fast.

  The curtain rose. A hand-lettered sign said that we were about to see “A Pretty Piece of Business,” which turned out to be a comedy skit. Following it were two sisters who danced in remarkable unison, like music-box figures. The audience grew restless.

  Finally the feature. By the most forgiving standards it was awful. Performed to Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, set with flowery painted backdrops depicting ancient Greece, a sequence of frothy numbers built to the goddesses’ contest for the golden apple. Buxom women in platinum wigs wore garish clinging gowns, one Viola Crocker, as Venus, parading herself especially sinuously. Her heavy curves were much appreciated by the house. To me she looked almost alarmingly overweight.

  I’d had about enough when Elise Holt finally sauntered on as Paris. Although ostensibly a male—she played the wisecracking, cigar-smoking soubrette—Holt alone wore flesh-colored tights. Her well-curved legs and hourglass torso showed to maximum effect. The blond curls peeped from under leafy garlands; the oval face was powdered and rouged. The audience paid rapt attention. So did I.

  She looked larger onstage than she had at the Troy ball grounds. But beside the others she was petite. She danced with jaunty grace. Her throaty voice sounded more suggestive than musical. Unlike the fleshy women, Holt exuded sensuality without seeming to try. It occurred to me that she was very like a 1920s flapper—liberated, mannish, sexual—almost sixty years before her time.

  “Witching little thing,” Twain remarked. “Vital as a St. Rupert’s drop.”

  “Fantastic body,” I said.

  He glanced at me. “And dressed with meagerness to make a parasol blush.”

  As an encore, the cast performed a wild full-stage cancan. “A wilderness of girls,” Twain called it.

  He was hard to read on sex. The glitzy peroxide and tights seemed to have amused more than titillated him. I remembered his writings as being sexually repressed, standard for the age. But it might have been a facade. Or imposed by Livy.

  Twain lit a cigar outside. “You fancy the little blonde?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  At a flower stall he purchased red roses and sent them backstage with a note. “Let’s see if this stirs anything.”

  We stood by the stage door. After most of the performers had departed, Holt appeared, bundled in furs, flanked by a man and a woman.

  “Miss Holt,” drawled Twain, tipping his hat. “If you’d be kind enough to join us, we’d be honored by your company at Delmonico’s.”

  She looked at him, brows knit. The other woman whispered. Holt smiled vaguely; either she didn’t know of Twain or didn’t care. “The flowers were lovely,” she said, starting past. “Thanks ever so much.”

  Damn, I thought, and stepped in front of her. “I enjoyed your performance here and in Troy.”

  Startled, the blue-violet eyes scanned my face and rested briefly on my cheek. “Why, you’re the one who provoked that row at the match!” She laughed, low-pitched and throaty. “I enjoyed your performance, sir.”

  “I’m Sam Fowler,” I said, grinning. “Come have a drink with us?”

  “That’s kind, but I’m afraid not.” She gestured at the man. “My fiance.”

  The guy gave me a tight smile. Fiance? Where the hell was he during the Troy game? Or did she only go to ball games with high-rolling Congressmen?

  Holt must have guessed my thoughts. A warning flashed in her eyes: Be quiet. I nodded slightly, smiling. “‘Night, gentlemen,” she said crisply.

  “That’s that,” I muttered, watching her move away.

  We walked several blocks in silence.

  “You fancy female companionship?” asked Twain.

  I thought about it. “More than ever.”

  We took a hack out Fifth Avenue toward Murray Hill, where Commodore Vanderbilt was planning to erect a magnificent railway depot to serve all Manhattan. In Twain’s view it would be too far uptown.

  “Where does ‘uptown’ start, anyway?”

  “About Twenty-fifth or so.”

  “That’s not so far, then.”

  “Too blamed far to walk from the St. Nicholas.”

  We descended in front of a tall brownstone on Thirty-fourth.

  “House of ill repute?” I said.

  “A palatial bagnio,” Twain replied. “Parlor houses are prospering between Union Square and Central Park, but I guarantee you won’t fault this one.”

  “You sound pretty knowledgeable.”

  “One of fame’s advantages,” he said mildly. “Entering doors that are otherwise shut.”

  A peephole clicked open. Twain was recognized. We stepped into a garnet-and-gold hallway. Recessed niches held a life-sized marble Diana and a bronze Cupid. A dandy with oiled sideburns ushered us into a large, overheated drawing room. I looked wonderingly at a profusion of crystal chandeliers, exotic plants, plush divans, and art objects. There were carvings and vases and busts—nearby on pedestals rested Cleopatra, Minerva, and, oddly, Milton—and on the walls oils by Hogarth, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Van Dyck. The dandy informed me archly that the carpets had been specially woven on Smyrna looms to match the Damascus hangings. Bursts of birdsong came from a gilded aviary. Incense hung heavily in the air. Water bubbled in a marble basin after flowing through an aquarium.

  “My God,” I breathed, loosening my tie, sweating in the hothouse atmosphere where everything seemed overripe. I wanted to peel off my clothes—maybe that was the idea.

  “Pleases the eyes, don’t it?” Twain said, looking about languidly as he settled on one of the divans. “I’d have no kick about this as a steady thing.”

  I was about to say it would drive me crazy when a cultivated voice said, “Gentlemen.” We looked up. A stout woman enveloped in yards of lace and satin, ablaze with diamonds, regarded us regally. We rose and bent in turn over her jeweled fingers. All convivialities of her home, she assured me, were at my disposal.

  “Since it’s manifest you prefer the finest company,” she said, beaming at Twain, “allow me to say that our young ladies are finely bred. You will enjoy their discourses.”

  “I’m sure I will.” I eyed a Rubenesque young thing floating around a corner in a filmy gown.

  “Precisely,” she said, and disappeared through the leaves of an enormous dieffenbachia, her departure not unlike, Twain remarked, a lit-up paddle wheeler forging through an overgrown channel.

  “How much will these Rabelaisian delights cost us?” I asked.

  “Cost you” he corrected. “I’m sworn to reform myself. Oh, the night could run sixty,
seventy dollars, but for that you’d get all you could concoct—and more.”

  “I’ll limit my concoctions.” I had at most fifty dollars left from my gambling winnings.

  Twain bought drinks, smoked a cigar, and departed. I wasn’t alone very long. A red-haired woman appeared, plump and rouge-cheeked. Her name was Opal, she said, and asked if I would care for champagne.

  “Well, I think I would.”

  She smiled and suggested showing me the salon. “Do you enjoy Chopin?”

  At a grand piano, playing a nocturne with effortless facility, sat a young woman with chestnut hair and pale eyes. She was wonderfully slender—doubtless viewed as a freak, I reflected—and her skin was flawless. She looked up at me. She smiled. I smiled back. Opal vanished discreetly. A waiter appeared with champagne and two glasses. The young woman finished playing.

  “Thank you, kind sir.” She sipped from the fluted glass and studied me over the rim. “I am Charlotte.”

  “I’m . . . impressed.”

  She took my arm and guided me to a loveseat. She sat close, her hip brushing mine. Her eyes regarded me intently. Her voice was cultivated, devoid of the flat eastern accents I’d grown used to. She was careful to ask little about me. We talked of San Francisco and its weather, topics about which she seemed knowledgeable. She asked if I would like to chat in a cozier quarter of the mansion.

  Her room was almost as lush as the parlor. A silk canopy overhung a huge bed swimming in folds of blue satin. In an alcove stood a sofa carved with arabesques. She led me to it.