Boston Jane

by Jennifer L. Holm

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writers are explorers, but like all explorers, we need guides to help us find our way in the wilderness.

  I have been very fortunate to have fantastic guides for Boston Jane. First, and foremost, a big thank-you to my terrific editors, Elise Howard and Ginee Seo, for believing in Jane. I have the nicest agent in the world, Jill Grinberg, and I can’t thank her enough for her good advice. And a million thanks to Shana Corey, Kate Klimo, Mallory Loehr, Heather Palisi, Diane João, and the whole gang at Random House for taking this adventure with Jane.

  A lot of research went into this book and many kind and generous people read the manuscript. I’d especially like to thank Gary Johnson, chairman of the Chinook Tribe, for giving thoughtful and excellent notes. Bruce Weilepp and Diantha Weilepp of the Pacific County Historical Society were incredibly patient with my long-winded questions (as always). And John O’Donnell was invaluable regarding nineteenth-century Philadelphia.

  Joan Mann at the Ilwaco Museum Research Library was wonderful with Willapa Bay queries. Scott Eberle and Carol Sandler at the Strong Museum were fantastic resources on just about everything American! In addition to being an excellent resource on nineteenth-century medicine, Sara Cleary-Burns and Stanley Burns of the Burns Archive were wonderfully supportive friends. Judy Downey and Laura Pereira at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and James Delgado at the Vancouver Maritime Museum helped with my nautical research.

  Most of all I’d like to thank Paul and Ginny Merz, the Boston Jane Willapa Bay Research Team, for their incredible support—I could never have done it without you! You guys are the best!

  My family has been very supportive, especially my dad, who faithfully read each and every draft, and my youngest brother, Matt, a fine writer himself, who went the extra mile and helped me with all the little details that bedevil writers. And, of course, my mom, who helped me survive my very own Sally Biddle.

  I want to thank some inspirational librarians and educators for their generous advice and friendship, especially Carolyn Brodie, Maria Salvadore, Diane Ellenburg, Elizabeth Poe, and Mary Ann Paulin. Also some great writers—Chris Curtis and Jerry Spinelli—for being so kind to the new girl! And of course, Ralph and Martha Slotten and Rudy and Diane Cusumano—good teachers every one, and even better friends.

  And the biggest thank-you to Louise and Willard Espy for inspiring me to write this book in the first place!

  Finally I must thank my husband, Jonathan, for his endless good advice, taking me to the Dixie Chicks concert for inspiration when I was stuck, and overall great husbandness in all things (especially the kissing part).

  It’s always good to do the research firsthand!

  For Jonathan,

  who loved Jane

  from the first

  If you are a well-bred lady, you must carry

  your good manners everywhere with you.

  It is not a thing that can be laid aside

  and put on at pleasure.

  —THE YOUNG LADY’S FRIEND (1836),

  By a Lady

  CHAPTER ONE

  or,

  Miss Hepplewhite’s Opinion

  Papa always said you make your own luck.

  But after being seasick for five months, two weeks, and six days, I felt certain that luck had nothing to do with anything aboard the Lady Luck, a poorly named vessel if ever there was one. I had just spent the morning of my sixteenth birthday puking into a bucket, and I had little hope that the day would improve.

  I had no doubt that I was the unluckiest young lady in the world.

  It wasn’t always this way.

  Once I was the luckiest girl in the world.

  When I was eleven years old, in 1849, the sea seemed to me a place of great wonder. I would lie on my four-poster bed in my room overlooking the street and pretend I was on one of the sleek ships that sailed along the waterfront, returning from exotic, faraway places like China and the Sandwich Islands and Liverpool. When the light shone through the window a certain watery way, it was easy to imagine that I was bobbing gently on the waves of the ocean, the air around me warm and sweet and tinged with salt.

  We lived on Walnut Street, in a brick house with green shutters, just steps from the State House. Heavy silk drapes hung in the windows, and there was new gas lighting in every room. When the lights were on, it glowed like fairyland. I believed it to be the loveliest house in all of Philadelphia, if only because we lived there.

  And my father was the most wonderful father in Philadelphia—or perhaps the whole world.

  Each morning Papa would holler, “Where is my favorite daughter?”

  I would leap out of bed and rush to the top of the stairs, my feet bare, my hair a frightful mess.

  “She is right here!” I would shout. “And she is your only daughter!”

  “You’re not my Janey,” he would roar, his white beard shaking, his belly rolling with laughter. “My Janey’s not a slugabed! My Janey’s hair is never tangled!”

  My mother had died giving birth to me, so it had only ever been Papa and me. Papa always said that one wild, redheaded daughter was enough for any sane man.

  As for my sweet papa, how can I describe the wisest of men? Imagine all that is good and dear and generous, and that was my papa.

  Papa was a surgeon, the finest in all of Philadelphia. He took me on rounds with him to visit his patients. I was always proud to hold the needle and thread while he stitched up a man who had been beaten in a bar brawl. Or I would sit on a man’s belly while Papa set a broken leg. Papa said a man behaved better and didn’t scream so much when a little girl was sitting on his belly.

  I was the luckiest girl.

  How could I not be with Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie?

  Mrs. Parker was our housekeeper, and she made the best cherry pie in the entire world. I ate it at every opportunity. Papa always said that I was going to turn into a cherry pie myself one day if I wasn’t careful.

  This was Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie: all tangy cherries rolled up in a golden, buttery crust. It was as sweet as clean sheets on washing day, as warm as the chair by the kitchen stove on a cold afternoon. Just imagine it sitting on the plate waiting for you, all piping hot from the oven.

  “There is nothing better in the world than a slice of Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie after a long day of stitching up bleeding heads,” Papa always said, and I couldn’t agree more.

  After Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie, the best part of the evening was talking to Papa. He had the most interesting way of looking at things.

  “Papa,” I said one evening, finishing up the last crumbs of my pie. “Mrs. Parker is complaining that she can’t find any decent help because all the young girls want to take factory jobs.”

  Papa leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe and puffed.

  “Well, Janey, dignity is very important. Maybe some of these girls don’t think it’s very di
gnified washing someone else’s laundry and emptying other people’s chamber pots. What do you think? Would you rather work in a factory or empty chamber pots?” he asked.

  It made me think, an activity Papa encouraged. “Speak up, Janey; say what’s on your mind,” Papa always said.

  “I don’t imagine it would be very nice to empty chamber pots,” I admitted. But I didn’t think the factory would be very nice either. The women who worked in factories had swollen ankles from standing on their feet all day.

  Papa brought home books from the Library Company, where he was a member, and we read them together after supper. My favorite story was “Rip Van Winkle” by Mr. Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle drinks too much liquor, falls asleep under a tree, and wakes up twenty years later. Rip Van Winkle greatly resembled the men of Philadelphia who spent their evenings drinking at taverns until they were senseless. It seemed a very silly activity.

  “Papa,” I asked. “Why are men always drinking too much liquor and getting into trouble?”

  “It is a great mystery, Janey. But”—and here Papa grinned—“it keeps your poor pa in business.”

  And he was right, because sure enough, every evening after the taverns had closed, I’d be woken by some drunken fool roaring that he was bleeding to death on our front porch and would the good doctor please come out and sew him up?

  Papa would let me get up and help him, and when we were finished he would make me a glass of warm milk and honey and tuck me into bed.

  “Where is my favorite daughter?” he would say, tweaking the end of my nose.

  “She is right here. And she is your only daughter,” I would say with a sleepy smile, sinking into my soft, warm bed. Then I would close my eyes and dream of the sea and Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie.

  Truly I was the luckiest girl in the world.

  Then my luck changed. Here is how it happened.

  Jebediah was Mrs. Parker’s boy and my favorite playmate. He was very clever and instructed me in all manner of useful things, such as how to throw clumps of manure at passing carriages, how to tease the butcher’s dog without being bitten, and how to spit. I am not boasting when I say I was excellent at spitting, the best in the neighborhood.

  “You’re better than the pigeons themselves!” Jebediah would say, awestruck at my ability to hit a gentleman’s hat from the roof without the man even noticing. There were fellows who walked around Philadelphia all day who didn’t even know that they had great gobs of spit on their hats.

  Jebediah was a fine spitter himself, and quite adept at using the space where his two front teeth used to be to lob a fine one at passersby. He’d lost his two front teeth when he’d slipped on a pat of manure and hit a cobblestone. Papa said that while spitting was a handy skill, the teeth would likely not grow back.

  The streets of Philadelphia were our playground. And how we played! We played with the newspaper boys, and the orphans, and the stray dogs, and Papa said we should, if at all possible, be careful to avoid the alleys where people were dying from cholera. One of our favorite games was lobbing rotten apples at the old tree outside the Biddle house on Arch Street. It was a towering tree that seemed to reach to heaven itself, and we would spend hours trying to see who could hit the highest branch.

  One autumn day Jebediah and I were challenged to a throwing contest by two boys from Arch Street, Horace Fink and Godfrey Hale. I am afraid that Horace was a disagreeable boy with big ears, and Godfrey Hale had a weepy eye and liked to stick his finger up his nose as if digging for gold.

  “Me first,” Horace Fink declared, snatching up an apple.

  He waited for a passing carriage to go by and then threw. The apple just skimmed the trunk of the tree.

  “Even Jane can do better than that,” Jebediah sniffed. He handed me a particularly rotten specimen of an apple.

  Horace Fink smirked at me. “You couldn’t hit a stone wall.”

  Jebediah rolled his eyes as if to say that Horace Fink was as thick as the tree he had missed.

  “Go on then,” Godfrey Hale taunted.

  The sun was shining brightly, the air still, the rotten apple heavy in my hand. I looked at Horace Fink’s smirking face. What was I to do? Really, did I even have a choice?

  Certainly not.

  I wound up and threw as hard as I could. And as the apple left my hand, Sally Biddle stepped out of her house.

  Need I tell you that Sally was everything that I was not? She was thirteen and perfect in all respects. Her waist was thin as a ribbon, her golden hair always styled in ringlet curls to perfection, and her skin white as milk. She was as stiff and neat as her crisp petticoats.

  Time seemed to stand still, appalled, as my apple went flying through the air. It missed the tree completely and smashed square onto the bosom of Sally Biddle’s pale rose dress.

  I froze.

  Then Sally Biddle let loose a scream so loud that windows up and down Arch Street shuddered and shook.

  Horace Fink hooted with laughter. “Bully for Jane!” he shouted.

  Across the street Sally Biddle was left in no doubt as to the identity of the guilty party.

  “Jane Peck!” she hissed, eyes flashing.

  And that was the beginning of my bad luck.

  Five years later, as I sailed aboard a brig named the Lady Luck, it seemed bad luck was something I would never escape.

  You see, when I’d dreamed of my sixteenth birthday, I had pictured an afternoon tea with girls in lovely gowns, flowers everywhere, and perhaps even one of Mrs. Parker’s cherry pies. It’s fair to say I’d never imagined being stuck in a tiny airless cabin, the same cabin that had been home for months on end. Instead of flowers and pie, I had a hard, narrow bunk, a rickety table and chairs, and a tiny window that wouldn’t open (a most helpful feature).

  At the beginning of the voyage, I had attempted to make the cabin comfortable. I’d put a linen tablecloth on the table and set embroidered cushions on the chairs. I’d laid out new china, placed a crystal vase on a small shelf, and hung a mirror on the wall.

  Samuel, the cabin boy, had come by and looked around, dumbstruck.

  “You sure you want to be putting all that out?” he’d asked.

  That first night at sea, we sailed into a storm. Need I describe the horror that followed? The tablecloth slipped off, the cushions bounced about, the china shattered into a million pieces, and the mirror came crashing down. My companion, Mary, caught the crystal vase as it fell, and I later packed it away in my camphor wood chest along with the cushions and tablecloth. But the broken mirror had seemed a bad omen.

  In the place where the mirror had hung, Mary pegged up a piece of paper with two columns. The left column said “Days at Sea,” and the right said “Fleas Killed.” The cabin was absolutely bursting with fleas. No matter that we shook out our blankets every day and killed as many of the pests as possible—they multiplied with staggering speed.

  On the day of my birthday, I lay all morning on that hard wooden bunk, nearly unable to stand from seasickness. By noon I was no better. The ship hit a wave, and Mary groaned from her bunk on the other side of the cabin. She was nearly as sick as I.

  “Happy birthday, Jane my girl,” she said in her thick Irish brogue. Her face was ashen, and her black hair looked decidedly dull.

  “I expect Sally Biddle didn’t spend her sixteenth birthday with her head over a bucket,” I said, a miserable expression on my face.

  “No, but just thinking about that girl makes me want to puke,” Mary said loyally, a spark lighting her dark eyes.

  I smiled weakly.

  The ship rolled hard, and her arm struck the bunk. She winced.

  “How is your arm?” I asked.

  Days earlier, I had awakened in the middle of the night to Mary’s screams. Among the assorted vermin on board was a surfeit of rats, who sauntered about as bold as you please. A big, fat fellow had bitten her and then scurried off into a hole in the wall, his wormy pink tail slithering out of sight behind him.

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nbsp; Mary held up her arm with a grimace. Yellow pus leaked through the bandages. “I’d better change that,” I said, and stood up, but before I could take a step, the ship hit a rolling wave. My belly heaved. I leaped for the bucket and sat down hard in a chair.

  At that most inconvenient moment, Father Joseph banged on our cabin door.

  “Mesdemoiselles,” he called.

  Mary groaned from the bunk and pulled the covers over her head.

  Father Joseph was a French Catholic missionary. While Mary and I had spent most of the voyage being sick, he had spent most of it preaching, no doubt to be in good form to convert the savages we would find at the end of our journey. We tried to be polite to him, but Father Joseph did try one’s nerves.

  “Come in,” I called. As he entered I reluctantly gestured to the other chair, sliding the reeking bucket under the table with my foot.

  “And how does this day find you, Mademoiselle Peck?”

  “Tolerably well,” I replied. Tolerably well, if you considered being seasick and killing fleas respectable pursuits for a young lady on her sixteenth birthday.

  “I am here to talk to you about the savages,” he announced, eyes shining. Father Joseph wore a thick, black wool robe and collar, and his head was as bald as an egg. He had huge, hairy eyebrows that perched atop his eyes like fuzzy caterpillars. When he was excited, his eyebrows danced around most alarmingly.

  “Not the blasted savages again,” Mary whispered from beneath her blankets, and even I groaned inwardly. It was his favorite sermon, and he had preached it at least twice a week since leaving port. I could practically preach it myself by now.

  “It is our Christian duty to show the savages the way of Christ,” Father Joseph began, waving his arms in swooping gestures. “For they are the most unfortunate of God’s creatures,” he declared.

  I murmured sympathetically. Privately I considered us more unfortunate than the savages. At least they were on dry land.

  Father Joseph’s eyebrows were twitching.