The New Colossus

by Marshall Goldberg

  Nellie let the words linger. She had no desire to lessen Edith Fairley’s discomfort.

  “Is Dr. Ingram in?” asked Nellie.

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “No. But I need to see him. Please tell him it’s important.”

  It was a directive, not a request. Mrs. Fairley knew enough not to defy Nellie and went to the rear hallway, but her horselike snort made her feelings known nonetheless. Nellie didn’t care. She was used to it. Women like Mrs. Fairley were as resistant to change as the men she encountered. Maybe even more.

  “Who does she think she is?” asked a perturbed Mary Jane. “Back home she wouldn’t last ten minutes with a manner like that.”

  “Her husband was a friend of Doctor Ingram’s.”

  “I bet he’s happy to be dead.”

  Mrs. Fairley came out of the interior office, the picture of disappointment. “The doctor will see you. He is finishing a letter and will meet you in the examining room.”

  “I can show myself in. Mother, wait here please. I won’t be long. Mrs. Fairley will keep you company.”

  “Well, that should be fun.”

  Nellie went down a corridor and entered a room on the left. It was dark, with gas lanterns and azure blue shades, furnished with a burgundy Oriental rug, an examining table, a mauve couch with tassels, an oak French Empire sitting chair, and a wooden desk with medical instruments and an ink well. Nellie, still worked up from her meeting with Barker, paced about the room.

  The door opened, and an earnest man of medium height, tired but gentle eyes, thick glasses, taut skin, and a professional air, with a tie and woolen suit that made him look considerably older than early thirties, walked in.

  “Miss Bly. Good afternoon.”

  “Hello, Dr. Ingram.”

  He closed the door behind him, and they rushed to embrace in a deep, passionate kiss. She clutched his lapels and pulled him to her while his hands slipped under her skirt and inside her undergarments. She moaned at his touch but pulled back.

  “We can’t,” she whispered. “Mother is outside.”

  “In the reception area?”

  “Yes.”

  His hands still on her buttocks and moving to the inside of her thighs, he tried to pull her toward him, but she resisted.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Next time. I promise.”

  “I can make it quick.”

  “I don’t want it to be quick.” She kissed him hard, making clear her hunger for him.

  It was during the latter stages of the Bellevue story that Nellie’s relationship with Ingram went beyond the platonic. She would meet him in his office nearly every afternoon to obtain information and go over records. His indignation with Bellevue had matched hers, and for a journalist, he was a gold mine. She was drawn to his heart, his mind, and his spirit, and to his vulnerability—his mother’s rubella had left him with poor eyesight and shortness of breath. To Nellie’s constant surprise, he never made a single advance toward her. Only later did she learn that he ached for her constantly, but he sensed the deep pain and anger inside her and had concluded that any step toward intimacy would have to come first from her or she would become mistrustful and hurt, and he could not bear the thought of that. He told her that he admired her so much, he was prepared to restrain himself even if nothing sexual ever happened between them. But Nellie did develop a trust, pushed along by desire, and one afternoon she simply held his face in her hands, kissed him tenderly, removed his clothes, and made love to him. At nearly every session after that, they made passionate love and then continued on with the work. Ingram never asked anything of her, never demanded or ordered or insisted. He left it up to her to set the boundaries, and she came to trust him as she had never trusted another man.

  Yet that trust had its limits. Nellie had been too betrayed, too mistreated by the world to trust Ingram completely. Though she was falling in love with him, she always held something back. It was imbued deeply inside her, and as a result they never discussed their feelings for one another. Nellie wanted to tell him she trusted him so much it frightened her, that she yearned to be with him constantly and wanted to share her innermost thoughts with him, but she could not say such things, at least not yet, not even to herself. Ingram, for his part, felt just as reticent, but Nellie knew his hesitation was due only in part to protectiveness toward her. He was also driven by his work and was struggling to grasp where his emotions for her fit in with his ambitions. And so he, like her, would enjoy what they had and hope it did not vanish too soon.

  “What explains this visit, or are you simply here to frustrate me?” asked Ingram as Nellie managed to pry herself away.

  “Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

  She led him over to the couch, clasped his hand, and told him about the events of the day, including the office visit with Barker. Even though she euphemized the most personal details, Ingram’s fists tightened at hearing a physician abuse a patient like that, especially Nellie.

  “What do you know about Barker?” she asked.

  “I think he should be horsewhipped.”

  “I meant as a doctor.”

  The New York City medical community was small; fewer than 500 men called themselves physicians. Ingram, she knew, as one who approached medicine as a science and believed strongly in the importance of exchanging information with colleagues, made a point of knowing as many doctors in New York and New Jersey as he could.

  “What is it you want to know?” he asked.

  “Is he a good doctor?”

  “No.”

  Nellie smiled. She liked Ingram’s candor.

  “I don’t think he knows what he’s doing,” she said.

  “He doesn’t.”

  She didn’t bother asking how Barker, a Yale man, managed an appointment at the new Cancer Hospital. That question answered itself. She had more important matters in mind.

  “Why would Emma Lazarus see him?” she asked. “She was an intelligent woman. She must have known he was mediocre.”

  “Most likely she did not want her family to know about her medical matter.”

  Nellie looked at him with surprise.

  “You think she was pregnant?”

  “Not necessarily. She could have seen him for other reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “Are you aware of the Comstock Act?”

  “I believe so. It makes pornography a crime.”

  “Yes. But its definition of ‘pornography’ includes any discussion of contraception.”

  “You mean it makes contraception illegal?”

  “It makes even discussing contraception illegal.”

  He did not need to elaborate. More than emancipation of the slaves, more than women getting the vote, contraception—the possibility of sex without risk of pregnancy—was the most threatening prospect in America. Sex without risk would mean the liberation of women and unbounded pleasure, i.e., the end of the American character and the very foundation of the country. Charles Goodyear had patented the first rubber condom in 1844, and by the 1870s, there was such widespread use of intrauterine devices and diaphragms that the number of women dying in childbirth had dropped by 30 percent in twenty-five years. Nevertheless, the prospect of sex without fear of pregnancy—and the emancipation of women—so appalled morals keepers of the time that thirty-four (out of thirty-eight) states passed laws outlawing dissemination or discussion of any contraception materials. Nor were these laws merely harmless platitudes. Anthony Comstock, the author of the federal law that bore his name, boasted that he was responsible for four thousand arrests and fifteen suicides.

  “Miss Lazarus may have simply wanted someone discreet to protect her from becoming pregnant,” said Ingram. “How did she find out about Barker?”

  “From a college friend of his. Mr. Charles DeKay.”

  “The critic at the Times?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she intimate with DeKay?”
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  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “Well, that might explain why she saw Barker.”

  Of course. Why else would she see an oaf like Barker? “Ingram, you are brilliant.”

  “No. You are brilliant.”

  “You’re right. I am brilliant,” she said, making him smile and clasping his hand even tighter. She felt so at ease, even girlish with him. She leaned against him as he put his arm around her.

  “But you still have a problem,” he said. “The doctors she saw in England were superb. If they concluded she had cancer, she almost certainly did.”

  “And her symptoms were all consistent with cancer. Even if her doctor here was a fool.”

  “Then what is your story for Mr. Pulitzer?”

  “I don’t know,” she said glumly.

  She sat there quietly, nestled in his arms, quietly running her fingers over his hand. She remembered something else about her conversation with Barker.

  “Would you ever give arsenic to someone in Emma’s condition?” she asked him.

  “Never.”

  “Barker did.”

  “He couldn’t have. Arsenic increases pain.”

  “He denied giving it, but I know he was lying.”

  “Then he is an even worse physician than I thought. If she was in the advanced stages of lymphatic cancer, his sole concern should have been making her comfortable. Once a patient is certain to die, you stop prescribing arsenic. It only accelerates death and makes the last days extremely unpleasant. Even a fool like Barker knows that.”

  “And yet he ordered it for her.” And then it hit her.

  “What are the symptoms of arsenic poisoning?” she asked.

  “Fatigue. Weight loss. Exhaustion.”

  “The same as cancer.” It was becoming clearer to her.

  “To the layperson, yes.”

  “So it’s possible she was dying of cancer but was still poisoned, and the poison is what actually killed her.”

  “Yes. Of course. Very possible.”

  She sat upright. “How would I prove it was poisoning?”

  “You would compare her blood samples in England with blood samples here just before her death. If the arsenic levels here were as high or higher, she was poisoned.”

  “Wouldn’t the blood samples be destroyed?”

  “No, the Cancer Hospital keeps vials for future research. As do the doctors in England. We should be able to obtain samples from both places.”

  “Ingram, you are fantastic.”

  She kissed him on the lips and jumped to her feet.

  “But even if you can show she was poisoned,” said Ingram, “you still don’t know who administered it to her. Or why. Barker simply prescribed it.”

  “I have a good idea where to start.”

  For the first time since Pulitzer gave her the assignment, she was excited. She might have a story after all. She started to open the door but stopped and looked at him. She felt such love and warmth in her heart for him, and there was love and warmth on his face, but she could not bring herself to tell him she adored him.

  “Thank you, Dr. Ingram.”

  “My pleasure, Miss Bly.”

  Chapter Five

  Castle Garden

  Nellie was afraid of no man. She had interviewed the most powerful manufacturers in the country and held her ground. Yet she had a knot in her stomach as she approached the desk of Alan Dale.

  Just as Nellie was revolutionizing journalism, Alan Dale was revolutionizing criticism. She was a huge fan of his and never missed a column. In the 1860s and 1870s, theater critics had written in a genteel, formal style and decreed the dramatist’s paramount responsibility to be the upholding of conventional morality. But beginning in the late 1870s, with the rise of a middle class eager for entertainment and with translations of contemporary European plays, American theater was forced to change.

  Repertory companies were replaced by long-running productions, traditional authors were replaced by Strindberg and Ibsen, classical themes gave way to modern ones. Any critic who could help confused readers sift through the maze of theater offerings could sell newspapers all by himself. And no critic’s opinions sold more newspapers than Alan Dale’s.

  He was feared by all of Broadway. The Dramatic Mirror said of Dale, “When he takes pen in hand, the playhouses throughout the land tremble upon their foundations and the faces of actors burn white with fear.” But no one ever missed a column because Dale’s way with words was simply unmatched. He once dismissed a George Bernard Shaw play as “a thick, glutinous, and imponderable four-act tract.” Of another playwright he wrote: “Nothing comes through the oleaginous, permeating fog, and there’s nothing worth coming through anyway. Better to have presented the fog without either author or character.”

  A coterie of producers repeatedly tried to have him fired, but Cockerill and Pulitzer knew they had a star on their hands, one that was eclipsing all the competition. And among that competition was Charles DeKay, the arts critic at The New York Times.

  Nellie had read all she could about Charles DeKay, and by any meaningful measure DeKay and Dale were polar opposites: DeKay was Yale-educated, moved in New York’s upper-tier social circles, enjoyed a reputation as a philanderer, and defended literary convention in a condescending, formal style. Dale was educated at public schools in England, Jewish (his real name was Allan Cohen), homosexual (his A Marriage Below Zero was one of the earliest novels of homosexual life in Victorian America), and breezily contemptuous of the old literary order. DeKay represented all that Dale loathed, and Dale represented all that DeKay despised. If Nellie wanted a frank assessment of Charles DeKay, Alan Dale was the person to ask.

  So, despite the feeling of walking into a shooting range, she made her way through the World newsroom, lifting her skirts a few inches above the slimy floor, and approached a foppish man in his early thirties, who was wearing shirtsleeves and glasses, had a deeply receding hairline, and was toiling away at his desk.

  “Mr. Dale?”

  He looked up and frowned.

  “How did you talk your way into the newsroom, madam?”

  It irritated her that he had no idea who she was or had no place there. “I work here. My name is Nellie Bly.”

  “Ah. Well, I can’t help you with theater tickets, Miss Bly. Sorry.” He returned to his work.

  “I don’t want theater tickets. I am working on a story, and Mr. Cockerill thought you might be of assistance.”

  “Cockerill is wrong about most things,” he said without looking up. “I’m sure this one is no exception.”

  Nellie was not surprised. At the Dispatch, the arts critics looked down on news reporters—just as news reporters looked down on arts critics.

  “May I at least ask?”

  “If you must.”

  Dale continued writing.

  “I was instructed by Mr. Pulitzer to investigate the death of Emma Lazarus.”

  Dale abruptly stopped what he was doing and looked up at her.

  “What exactly about her death does he want you to investigate?”

  “He is convinced her demise was … not due to her cancer.”

  Dale measured her closely.

  “And what does this have to do with me?”

  “Her companion for several years until her death was Charles DeKay. I would like to know more about him.”

  Dale sighed. He had seen enough. “This story is beyond you, Miss Bly.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked, stung.

  “Sneaking into the women’s asylum and writing about conditions there was quite a feat, and I salute you for it. But this undertaking is attempting to climb Masada, with Romans at the top ready to heave boiling oil down upon you.”

  “I’ve encountered goons before, Mr. Dale,” Nellie said defiantly.

  “But that’s all they were: goons. Hired thugs. These are forbidding forces from a half-dozen different directions w
ho allow nothing to stand in their way.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “Am I? Tell me, why did you accept this assignment?”

  “Because Mr. Pulitzer asked me,” she said.

  “That was it? Because Pulitzer asked?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  Dale shook his head and went back to his writing.

  “So you won’t help me?”

  “I am a busy man, Miss Bly. I have no interest in wasting my time.”

  “And why are you convinced it would be such a waste of your time?”

  “You lack motivation. You will put in a token effort, encounter resistance, tell Mr. Pulitzer you’ve done all you can, and hope he will accept your meager offerings so you can get on to a story that you really wish to write.”

  “Mr. Dale, you have no idea how far I will go for a story.”

  “That’s the point. This is not a regular story. This involves the murder of the finest human being I ever knew. The finest anyone in this city, I daresay, ever knew. If I believed you were intent on getting to the basis of her demise, I would share with you all I know about Charles DeKay or anyone else. Gladly. But I fear it will more likely result in a disappointment for me that I have no wish to bear right now.”

  She was surprised at the depth of his passion.

  “Can you at least tell me why you feel so strongly about Miss Lazarus since this may well mean the end of my story?” she asked.

  “I shouldn’t have to,” he snapped. “You are investigating a possible murder, yet you don’t even know the first thing about the extraordinary victim.”

  “Then educate me, Mr. Dale. Please. Because if I tell Mr. Pulitzer I was unable to learn anything, the truth about her death may never be known. Is that what you want?”

  Dale’s eyes bored through her as he measured her fortitude. Perhaps he saw the anger she kept hidden most of the time, or maybe it was the resolve that allowed her to spend ten days in a medieval asylum, or maybe it was simply that Alan Dale was a wounded idealist and wanted to believe in justice even though his mind and experience told him there was no such thing. But he decided to take a chance.