by Peter Quinn
The landlord shut his door and would not speak to them. On the third night, Bill died from the cholera. They wrapped his body in a sheet and carried it down to the street. They left it on the curb to be carted away to the potter’s field. When Charles awoke the next morning, Bill’s body was still there, the flies in a thick, noisy cloud around it. But his other friend, the third in their trio, was gone. He had quietly gathered all the money they had earned, everything Bill left, everything Charles had, and run away.
Charles wandered the streets in a daze. He was aching with hunger, alone, frightened, bewildered, without money or friends in the streets of a city polluted with foreignness and disease. His only hope was to return home, to face his father’s wrath. He leaned against the side of a building for support. There beside him, tacked up on a long corkboard and framed in glass, were the familiar pages of the Tribune. He was on Spruce Street, outside the paper’s offices. He peered inside. Men were moving quickly, with purpose. He could hear the rattle of the presses. Somewhere in the building Mr. Greeley was penning his visions of the future. Charles felt a surge of hope. He thought about going inside and asking to see Mr. Greeley. But he couldn’t summon the courage. He looked at the sheets once again. In the corner, just at his eye level, was a column of notices. He began to read them. He got no further than the first one. Wanted. A reliable Protestant boy. Able to read and write. Needs to be industrious. The firm of Stark and Evans. 51 Cortlandt Street. He stopped a stranger and asked where Cortlandt Street was. The man pointed west. Charles ran as fast as he could. He arrived out of breath and in a lather. Mr. Stark said he liked to see such haste in a boy. He hired him on the spot.
Charles began to dig for gold with a broom. He swept out the offices that evening, slept in an alleyway, washed in the public fountain near City Hall, and was waiting at the door when Mr. Stark appeared at eight the next morning. They set him to running errands, storing and fetching account books, making sure the inkwells were filled. He finished all his work and walked up the stairs to Stark’s office and asked for more. Stark looked at Charles over his spectacles. “A commendable request, my boy,” he said. The third day, Charles asked for a key to the office so that he could start his work as soon as he arrived each morning. Stark said he would take it under consideration and went back to his work. At the end of the day, Stark called Charles over, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a long, heavy key. “A great trust is given you,” he said. “Be worthy of it.”
Charles stayed until the last clerk had put out his lamp and gone home. He swept and dusted and replaced the books. When he was sure nobody would return, he raised the trapdoor to the basement. He took a tattered piece of canvas he had found discarded by the docks, put it on the dirt floor, and used it for his bed. He knew he would have to be up by six, so he left the trapdoor open and listened for the gong of the big clock mounted at the bottom of the stairs next to Stark’s office. The chimes reverberated through the silent building. He never overslept. With the money he saved, he bought a respectable set of secondhand clothes on Chatham Square. He lived in the basement until the middle of January. The cold in the building became so intense that he awoke one morning with feet and hands that were purplish and numb. He came down with a fever and a painful cough, and decided he had to find some appropriate lodgings. He rented a bed in a boardinghouse on West Street, three single beds in his room, the other two occupied by clerks, old men who drank too much, their entire earthly treasure stored in the beaten leather trunks at the bottom of their beds. He was still the first one in the office every day. “I couldn’t expect a better record of punctuality if you resided in this building,” Stark said.
Every morning at a few minutes before ten, Stark put on his coat and hat and left the office. On a warm, windy morning in April, he approached Charles and told him to come with him. They walked with their heads down, each with a hand on his hat, Stark one or two steps ahead. At the corner of Thames Street and Trinity Place, Stark took his watch out of his vest pocket and looked up at the clock atop Trinity Church. The chimes began to ring out ten o’clock. Stark put his watch back into his pocket and patted it. He walked down a small flight of stairs. Charles went behind him. He felt temporarily blinded as they entered a dark, low-ceilinged room whose air was thick with the smell of mutton and musty ale.
They sat in the back, at a table set against the wall. “I’ve come to Old Tom’s midmorning for the past thirty-six years,” Stark said. “I make no decision till I’ve eaten here and filled my stomach with a substantial meal that draws off some of the blood which accumulates in the brain during sleep and sets it to the work of digesting my food. Be sure to fill your stomach every morning and drain some of the blood out of your head. A wise and necessary act for every man of business. Many a firm has been ruined by decisions made by fevered brains and empty stomachs.” Mr. Stark ordered a mutton chop and fried potatoes and a cup of hot coffee with a shot of brandy in it. He ordered the same food for Charles but no brandied coffee. “At your age,” Stark said, “you have no need of stimulants in order to start the day.”
The waiters were all old colored men who moved with an air of dignity. One of them put a basket of hot bread on the table. Stark began to devour it. He pointed at the basket and gestured for Charles to do the same. When they had eaten all the bread, Stark said, “Charles, you’re a remarkable young man. I have high hopes for you. And because of this I confess to a certain interest in your origins and background, an interest I don’t usually take in the errand boys we hire. You obviously come from good solid stock, but tell me about yourself, boy, about your parents and education and how you came upon your ambitions.”
Stark sat back in his chair as the waiter served their food. He set immediately to work cutting and eating the chop, drawing the blood away from his brain. Charles stared down at his food. His stomach tightened. He became flushed and confused. The tale of a Long Island runaway, a thwarted traveler to California, the son of a hand-to-mouth fisherman-farmer, was not one he wanted to tell. The story in one way or another of all the American boys crowding among the immigrants in the attics and basements near the docks, it did ambition nor foretell success. He had to do better than that. He reproached himself for not having thought of something before. Stark kept his head up as he shoveled the food into his mouth. He arched his eyebrows and waved his hand, as if to say, Begin, boy, let me hear.
Charles searched his head. He remembered the morning edition of the Tribune. It was all that came to mind. Stark was waiting. Charles felt as if he were drowning. He struggled to find some limb with which to pull himself to safety. A heading from an article was all that floated into view: MORMONS SPLIT OVER GOLD RUSH. BRIGHAM YOUNG DENOUNCES THOSE WHO LEAVE THE “KINGDOM OF DESERET” FOR THE “FLESHPOTS OF CALIFORNIA.”
“Mr. Stark,” Charles said, “my parents are Mormons.”
Stark stopped eating. He put down his knife and fork. “Good God,” he said.
Charles felt his foot scrape sand. He wasn’t going to drown. The story came to him as he talked. He was from upstate, outside Albany, the only son of a prosperous farmer and his wife. (Albany was the only city in the state outside of New York whose name he knew. Charles prayed Stark wouldn’t ask for details. He didn’t.) Stark seemed mesmerized as Charles told his story. Charles’s parents were pious and uneducated folk. They had never ventured any distance from the farm. Occasionally, his father went into Albany, but he never took Charles or Charles’s mother with him. Theirs was a peaceful, quiet, uneventful life until about a year before, practically to the day, when at around dusk two strangers rode up to their farmhouse. They looked like respectable men. They said they were tired of traveling and wanted to hire some lodgings for the night. Father took them in. Mother cooked for them. In the evening they came into the parlor with their Bibles and read in silence. Mother and Father joined them. After a while the men brought out another book. A Mormon bible.
“You mean the Book of Mormon?” Stark said.
“Y
es,” Charles answered. “I could hear them talking from up in my bedroom. Not the words, but their tone. At first, Father sounded angry. He was arguing with them. I heard my mother crying, soft sobs. Their voices settled down. After a bit, I fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning, the men were gone, but Mother and Father were different. There was a flatness to their voices, a hardness in their eyes I had never seen evidence of before.”
Charles had his feet now. He was treading on dry land. Stark had forgotten his food. He was listening raptly. Charles began to relish his tale, sensing that here was the greatest privilege a city could offer: a man’s right to decide who he would be. The city gave what no village would. The ability to disappear and reappear, to die and to be born again. If a man assumed a role, the way Barnum or Greeley did, if he pretended to be a prophet or a showman, all the city cared about was that he succeed. The city applauded its successes and dismissed its failures. Nothing else mattered. And Charles sensed something more: The water he was emerging from was the river of baptism.
Charles told Stark that before he knew it his parents had become Mormons in their hearts and joined with other converts in the area, not merely to read the Mormon scripture but—as painful as it was for him to say—to indulge in the plurality of wives. They were like strangers to their son, and when they announced their intention to sell their farm and join a company of Mormons headed for the Great Salt Lake, Charles decided to run away. He took the small amount of money he had saved and bought passage on, the Albany steamboat. He left at night and arrived in New York City the next morning, alone, almost penniless, struggling to believe that God would sustain him. And He had. On the second day in the city, he had wandered by the Tribune and seen the advertisement of Stark and Evans. Stark sat motionless, his mouth open, his food untouched. The story’s ending came effortlessly to Charles.
“Mr. Stark, I have a confession to make.”
“Something else?”
“Charles Bedford is not the name I was born with. My real name is Ezra Van Wyck.”
Ezra Van Wyck was the name of one of the clerks Charles had shared a room with. The man had died in his sleep two weeks before.
“Why did you change it, boy?”
“Two reasons, sir. First, because when I left my parents, I felt it a kind of death. The family I had been part of was gone. The name no longer had any meaning for me. Second, because on my first night in the city I had crept into a livery stable on Charles Street near the docks and slept on a pile of straw. I prayed for God’s help but awoke hungry and bereft of hope. I began to wander the streets aimlessly. I had no money. My hunger became so great my legs shook. I thought of throwing myself into the river when suddenly I heard a voice speak to me. ‘The Lord feeds His lambs,’ it said. I looked around but there was no one to be seen. Suddenly I realized my hunger was gone, and my despair. I stopped the first passerby. Where am I? I said. What street is this? I took hold of his arm. He pulled away, frightened. Bedford Street, he said.
“Sir, it was as if I’d entered the world anew. My prayer on Charles Street had been answered on Bedford. Charles and Bedford. I had entered the Jordan on one street and emerged on the other. I knew now that I stood on solid ground, and not an hour later I passed the offices of the Tribune and was soon on my way to you. But now I was no longer Ezra Van Wyck. I was a new creation. Charles Bedford.”
Charles wanted to order a brandy and drink it in one gulp. A celebration. He had taken his name and made it his own, turned it to his own use, put himself on the map. Hurrah Charlie! He cut slowly into his chop. It was cold. He was seized by an elemental hunger but made himself eat slowly. He didn’t look up for a few minutes. When he did, there were tears in Mr. Stark’s eyes.
The next day, Charles was given a desk and a stool. They were set up outside Stark’s office. For the first time, the clerks addressed Charles Bedford as something other than “boy.” Charles learned the business quickly. Stark and Evans had been founded by Stark’s grandfather and a Mr. Evans, two round-faced, red-cheeked men whose portraits smiled down onto the counting floor. It was an old-style firm that dabbled in all sorts of transactions: loans, insurance, investments in canals and roads, imports and exports, and money exchanges. The workday was long but leisurely, a continuation of the polite, intimate world of the firm’s founders, business conducted in coffeehouses and taverns among gentlemen who had known one another all their lives, money accumulated slowly, without haste. Every day, after breakfast at Old Tom’s, Charles accompanied Stark to the Merchants’ Exchange Building, a stately Greek temple on the block between Wall Street and Exchange Place and Hanover and William streets. The two men stood in the room rented by the Stock and Exchange Board. Stark always took up the same position, in a corner with his back to the wall, his elbow resting on a windowsill. Silence, said Stark, is a wonderful weapon. It makes other men nervous. They are distracted by the absence of noise and try to plug the hole with their chatterings. Often they’ll reveal things they otherwise would not.
Gradually the room filled up with stout, gray men like Stark. They moved deliberately around the room, never raising their voices. Around noon, an auctioneer would mount an oaken rostrum that was carved and polished like a pulpit and call out prices on securities being offered for sale. A brief bidding would go on, accounts settled, entries made in ledgers, papers exchanged, hands clasped, and the men would leave as they entered, slowly filing out, sometimes alone, sometimes arm in arm.
Charles paid attention. He stayed close to Stark’s side. Stark would pull slips of paper from his pocket, lean over on the windowsill, and scribble on them. He would fold a slip and say “Groesbeck” or “Thorne” or “Lockwood” or “Van Zandt.” He would point to the recipient, and Charles would move quickly to deliver it, press the paper into the man’s hand, and whisper, “From Mr. Stark.” Often he simply stood next to Stark in silence, and listened. The room hummed with the soft tones of privileged conversations. But from outside came voices that seemed to grow louder and more raucous each month, voices that seemed to have no secrets. Charles watched from the window. To someone who didn’t know better, what he saw might seem a minor civil disturbance, hundreds of men milling in the street, waving their arms, shouting and pointing, their faces crimson from exertion. The sound of the curbstone brokers arose every morning, no matter how wet or cold or hot the weather, their enthusiasm never diminishing. Once in a while, Stark looked out the window and a pained expression came over his face. “The tribe of speculators,” he said, “is more dangerous than any tribe of red men.”
The tribal war whoop grew stronger. Gold from California fed the frenzy. Lands seized from Mexico gave life to the tribal dream of empire. The corner outside the Stock and Exchange Board became more crowded. New men appeared, no gray in their hair. “Nobodies,” Stark said. They traded wildly in mining stock and railroads, in steamships and telegraphs. They hired rooms and ran telegraph wires out of them, looking on the hinterland beyond the Hudson as one great market, one immense gold mine. They moved about the narrow, crooked streets of the financial district reading printed sheets as they went, their fingers running down the columns of price quotations, trading a million shares a day among themselves while the daily auction among the members of the Board barely reached five thousand:
Stark grew tired of pushing his way through the crowded street. He lingered over his coffee and brandy in Old Tom’s, ordered a refill, and sent Charles ahead. He preferred to tend to his social duties, and became more prominent in the city’s philanthropies. In December of 1855, he brought Charles along with him to a lecture by Mr. Charles Loring Brace, of the Children’s Aid Society, at the old Dutch church on Nassau Street. “Involvements in charity are an important part of a gentleman’s life,” said Stark. “They speak of a responsibility that extends to all things.” The crowd was mostly brokers, but Mr. Greeley was there, the first time Charles saw him in the flesh, and Frederick Law Olmsted, the editor of Putnam’s Monthly.
Stark introduced Cha
rles to Cornelius Roosevelt, a director of the Chemical National Bank and a legendary stalwart of the financial community. Roosevelt put his head close to Stark’s and said something. Both men threw their heads back in laughter. Charles felt uncomfortable, afraid that the comment might have been at his expense, but as he and his employer moved toward their seats, Stark said, “Roosevelt just observed that it must be a powerful temptation to divine justice to gather so many brokers under the Lord’s roof.” He laughed again. They entered a pew, and Stark reached over and tapped a man on the shoulder.
“Audley,” he said. The man turned around and started to rise. Stark put his hand on his shoulder. “Please, stay seated.”
Charles had seen the man several times in the office. Mr. Audley Ward, a client. He looked as if he could be Mr. Greeley’s brother. Ward showed no sign of recognition when Stark said, “This is Charles Bedford, an associate of the firm.”
