The New Colossus

by Marshall Goldberg

  “Come with me.” He grabbed his coat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Castle Garden.”

  Castle Garden, in Battery Park, was the main port of entry for all European immigrants to America. Nellie had heard all about Castle Garden as a girl—some of her father’s relatives had landed there after the potato famine and land shark laws. Originally erected as Fort Clinton to protect the harbor back in the 1600s, Castle Garden became the arrival point for 250,000 immigrants a year from 1855 on. No federal immigration authority existed—immigration was considered entirely a state matter—and the immigrants who arrived at Castle Garden were free to walk off the boat and into the New World without permission from anyone. Throughout the country’s first hundred years, nearly all the immigrants arriving at Castle Garden were Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians from Northern and Western Europe, following people like themselves to America. But in the early 1880s, with the pogroms after the assassination of liberal Tsar Alexander II in Russia, the earthquakes in Italy, and the wars in Poland and Hungary, the demographic profile of immigrants to America shifted to people from Southern and Eastern Europe—Italians, Slavs, Poles, and Jews, people very different in appearance and manner and aspiration from their Western and Northern European predecessors. Since 1880, the number of Italian immigrants to America each year had jumped tenfold, from 40,000 to 400,000. For Jews, the numbers were even more unprecedented: three million Jews lived in Russia and Poland in 1880, and one million of them took flight to the West following Alexander II’s death. Though many went to France or England or Germany, hundreds of thousands made their way to America.

  This enormous wave of strange people did not sit well with those already living in the United States. A nationwide hysteria arose against all new immigrants, leading to beatings and burnings and the Immigration Act of 1882, which removed all responsibility for immigration from the states and placed it in the hands of the federal government.

  During the Congressional debates, Castle Garden was cited as the best example of the need for a federal authority, New York obviously not discerning enough in its choice of newcomers. A new federal immigration facility to impose strict controls upon entry was under construction at Ellis Island, not far from Liberty Enlightening the World.

  The new Immigration Act did not go into effect until 1892, however, so the State of New York still oversaw the busiest entry point into America. Nellie had no idea why Dale was taking her there now, nor would he tell her. When they finally arrived, he pointed out a boat moored alongside a steamship, about two hundred yards from shore and just past the giant copper statue of Lady Liberty, bearing the insignia of the newly established Red Cross.

  “A doctor from the Quarantine Office has to make sure no one with disease comes ashore,” explained Dale.

  At the dock, a barge was unloading hundreds of immigrant families. Some had only the clothes on their backs. Many had little children with hollow eyes as big as their faces, looking as if they had never eaten. But all of them, no matter how poor or exhausted, looked elated to be in the New World.

  “Once they disembark, however,” Dale went on drolly, “they face a different kind of parasite.”

  A dozen or so street hustlers descended on the immigrants, waving tickets and money like prizes from heaven.

  “A few are simply agents of the railroads, the steamship lines, the boarding houses, the money exchanges—they’re looking to fleece the unwary. But others, the more vile ones, work for steel mills and coal mines and sweat shops—they’re all looking for cheap labor. The idea is to put the immigrants in debt on the journey there, then make them work for months at slave wages to pay it off.”

  The men surrounded the immigrants and sweet-talked them in languages Nellie didn’t recognize. Some of the immigrants, taken in by the friendliness and excitement of arriving in America, couldn’t resist the men’s entreaties.

  “Emma took them on,” Dale continued with deep admiration. “Her first day here, she shouted at two thieves fleecing a family, but they roughed her up and chased her away. The next day she came back with Governor Cleveland himself and shamed him into putting a stop to it immediately. No hustlers were allowed anywhere near Castle Garden, the outside was patrolled by police, and all immigrants were directed inside the building where government workers offered assistance on where to go and how to pay for it. And for those who by nature mistrusted bureaucrats, Emma wrote a Guide for Immigrants, translated into ten different languages.”

  Nellie watched a burly con man with muttonchops and a plaid suit speaking magnanimously to an immigrant family with a pregnant wife and five small children. He cast a dark look at another hustler trying to horn in on his business.

  “Once Cleveland became President,” continued Dale, “his attention shifted elsewhere and the vermin returned. Emma fought twice as hard, demanded the authorities maintain their resolve, and when they faltered, went to the press. Most of them ignored her, but Pulitzer published stories on these thieves, naming them and the people behind them. It kept them at bay until Emma became ill. After she died, there was no one to carry on the fight.”

  Nellie saw the con man offer candy to the immigrant children. Her ire got the better of her, and she strode up the planks.

  “Where are you going?” asked Dale.

  She approached the family. The agent was holding a ticket, and the father was about to hand him some crumpled money. Nellie could not make out much of the conversation, but she did hear the word Atlanta.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the father. “What is your destination?”

  The father looked at her in confusion. He did not understand English.

  “Where are you going? What is your destination?” asked Nellie slowly.

  “What are you doing, lady?” asked the burly agent, irritated.

  “Trying to help them.”

  “They don’t need your help. Leave.”

  The agent said something to the father in a language she couldn’t make out, indicating that Nellie was unstable and shouldn’t be listened to. He handed the father the ticket and reached for his money.

  “Do any of you speak English?” Nellie pressed the wife and children. They shook their heads.

  The agent grabbed her by the arm. “I told you. Move along.” He shoved her away.

  “No, I won’t move along.”

  She took a step toward the family when the thug smacked her across the temple with the back of his hand and knocked her down.

  “Now stay the hell away from here.” She lay there, dazed.

  “Miss Bly. Are you all right?”

  It was Dale, kneeling beside her. Nellie’s head throbbed, and she tried to shake away the haze.

  “Say something, Miss Bly. Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” she said uneasily.

  Dale glared at the thug.

  “You want to be next, sheenie?” said the man. “Come on. Say something. I can knock you right down with her and the two of you can moan together.”

  Dale held his tongue.

  The burly man grunted with contempt, turned back to the family, and grabbed the father’s money. Suddenly he heard an unexpected voice.

  “Wohin gehten Sie?”

  It was Dale. The family perked up and looked at him like a long-lost friend.

  “I’m warning you,” said the burly man menacingly. “Stay out of this.”

  “Atlahnta,” said the father in a thick accent. “Wie haben freunde.”

  Dale stood and beckoned for the ticket. The father handed it to him.

  “This says Chicago,” Dale said to the thug. “They want to go to Atlanta.”

  “The ticket is to Atlanta, Illinois. It stops in Chicago.”

  Dale turned to the father.

  “Das ticket ist fur Chicago. Chicago ist der West, zwei thousand miles. Atlant
a ist der Sud, zwei thousand miles. Das man ist ein gonef!”

  “Ich nicht ein gonef—” said the man, but the father angrily grabbed his money back and spit at the thug’s feet.

  “Hey. Gibbe—” said the thug and reached for the money. But the father began shouting.

  “Gonef! Mumzer!” Other immigrants came over as if it were a distress call. The father began jabbering at them in Yiddish and pointed at the thug. The men began surrounding him with violence in their hearts. The thug took off as fast as he could, with some of the men in pursuit.

  The father turned to Dale.

  “Danke,” he said with deep gratitude.

  “Bitte. Zie helfen innen.” He pointed toward the Garden. The pregnant wife helped Nellie to her feet.

  “Thank you,” said the woman in a thick Russian accent. Nellie smiled at her, still trying to get her bearings.

  “Welcome to America,” said Nellie.

  The father hugged Dale. The mother hugged Nellie. Soon the kids hugged them both.

  Dale pointed again toward the Garden.

  “Zie helfen innen.”

  The family nodded and squeezed their hands again and again and finally went inside. Nellie watched them go.

  “If the public ever learns you are capable of such kindness, Mr. Dale, they will be very disappointed.”

  “I beg you not to tell them. Now you see why I took you here.”

  “So I would understand more of Miss Lazarus.” Reading about Emma was one thing, but seeing firsthand what she fought against and what she accomplished was something else altogether.

  “I wanted to see if you were capable of such understanding. And you did well.” She appreciated the compliment. Those were rarities coming from Alan Dale.

  “But I still need to know more of Mr. DeKay.”

  “And you shall, Miss Bly.”

  He took out two tickets from his breast pocket.

  “He will be at the Metropolitan tonight, for the opening of the new Verdi opera. Judge him for yourself.”

  He handed her the tickets.

  “But aren’t you going?”

  “I’ve seen the rehearsals and the performers. I already know what I’ll write,” he said and summoned a carriage.

  Chapter Six

  Metropolitan Opera House

  On the carriage ride to Chelsea, Alan Dale described what awaited Nellie that night, both at the opera and with Charles DeKay.

  “Five years ago, New York City society underwent a grand metamorphosis. Some considered the shift to be monumental, but others”—indicating himself—“viewed it as simply a new wave of pests infesting the land.

  “Ever since the Civil War, Mrs. William Astor—Lina to her friends—ruled New York society like an iron-willed Victoria. With her sycophantic ferret from Savannah, she developed ‘Mrs. Astor’s 400,’ a list of the families blessed enough to be invited to her annual ball at her mansion at Thirty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. Mrs. Astor and her four hundred had no use for lowlifes such as the Vanderbilts, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, and anyone else who made their fortunes in the messy world of business.

  “The industrial millionaires and their wives, as you can imagine, smarted from the rejection. They felt entitled to the respectability that goes along with enormous wealth.

  “And while they did build massive mansions that dwarfed the brownstones of the four hundred, Mrs. Astor and her list preserved the one bastion that the nouveau riche craved above all others: the boxes at the Academy of Music Opera House. The Academy hall had eighteen carefully guarded boxes strictly reserved for the city’s aristocracy. Only those on the list of four hundred could enter the eighteen Academy boxes or attend the balls afterward.

  “The wives of the industrialists refused to stand for this. Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt arranged for seventy shareholders to put up $1.7 million to acquire land and erect a new opera house at Thirty-Ninth and Broadway—mere blocks from Mrs. Astor’s home. A glittering new theater—four times the size of the Academy of Music, with 122 boxes and 3,615 seats spread among three tiers—debuted one year later with a performance of Faust. All of New York rushed to see the new building and attend the operas, and with unlimited wealth at its disposal, the Metropolitan Opera attracted the finest performers in the world—on an exclusive basis, of course. Within two years, the old Academy of Music was forced to close. It is now a vaudeville house for sailors on shore leave.”

  Dale chuckled. Americans and their craving of respectability amused him no end.

  “This is not to say that the atmosphere at the new opera house is any less stifling. As with the old Academy, the program at the Met is secondary to the company one keeps. And no one at the new opera house is more aware of his company than Charles DeKay.”

  “But DeKay has all the pedigree he needs. A Yale education, an arts critic for a newspaper, family in the literary world—”

  “DeKay was born into an old New York family, yes. But when he was a young boy, his father lost the family fortune on a business venture and then drank himself to death. The mother took the three children to Europe—partly out of shame, partly out of economic necessity. With the help of friends, the family eventually made it back to America, but DeKay never forgot the humiliation of being looked upon with pity.”

  “ ‘The help of friends,’ ” thought Nellie with resentment. The kind of friends who were unavailable to her mother when they were tossed out of their house. Already she had no use for Charles DeKay.

  “DeKay has a certain unctuous charm,” said Dale, “and through family connections, he was admitted to Yale, where he concentrated on fencing and plagiarizing poetry. After leaving Yale, he was eager to make a mark and submitted a poem to The Atlantic that, it turned out, Longfellow had written for Scribner’s forty years earlier. Because his sister and brother-in-law, Helena and Richard Gilder, were editors at Harper’s, the matter was quietly dropped, apologies given and accepted. A year later, through Helena’s intercession, The Times took him on as its arts critic.”

  “The political desk must have been filled,” she said acerbically. Of all the papers Nellie had interviewed for her initial story, the Times had been the most adamant about not hiring women.

  “It was his treatment of Emma that was truly vile. You see, DeKay stayed inseparably close to her in literary circles, to catch the reflected light of her brilliance, but in social circles he kept his distance because she was a Jew. Within months of Emma’s death, DeKay announced an engagement to Lucy Edwaline Coffey, the daughter of a wealthy importer and the granddaughter of Robert E. Lee.”

  “But Lee was a traitor!” she said. Nellie’s father had despised Lee. He would go on and on about it when she was a little girl. “Lee was the superintendent of West Point,” her father would say when someone made the mistake of speaking favorably of the Confederate general, “and then he fought against the United States. Of the ten battles in the war with the most casualties, Lee led the Confederacy in six of them. Two hundred thousand soldiers died in those battles. He should be hung!”

  “And when did DeKay meet Miss Coffey?” asked Nellie, sensing the answer.

  “Well before Emma became ill. He remained with Emma so as to avoid her wrath and retain whatever access he had to the literary elite. The courtship of Miss Coffey was not made public until after the funeral—about the same time that DeKay suddenly began spending on extravagant items beyond his means.”

  “What a loathsome human being.”

  “Now you see why I was reluctant to talk about him,” he went on. “If you were halfhearted about reporting the story, I had no interest in helping you.”

  “But why would Miss Lazarus be involved with such a man?”

  “That, I am sorry to say, remains a mystery.”

  The hansom pulled up to a theater in Madison Square. It was shortly before six.

  “Why are we stopping here?”

/>   “You wanted to speak to Mr. DeKay, didn’t you? You will be seated two boxes away from him at tonight’s opera.”

  “But that’s in just a few hours,” she sputtered, glancing at the late afternoon sun.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Of course there’s a problem. For one thing, I have no escort.” Nellie was an independent woman, but no woman went to an opera by herself, especially if she wanted to be inconspicuous.

  “I’m sure you can think of someone.” He snapped his fingers, and a boy—there were dozens on every Midtown street corner—came hurrying over. Dale took a paper and pen from the boy and offered it to her. Nellie hesitated. She and Ingram kept their relationship private. But she had no idea whom else to ask.

  “Miss Bly,” Dale said impatiently. “This is no time for propriety—especially one I suspect you don’t subscribe to anyhow.”

  “All right.” She took the piece of paper and pen and wrote out a short message, then folded it up and wrote an address on top. Dale handed it to the courier and gave him a coin.

  “Be quick about it,” he said to the boy. “Wait for a reply and bring it back to us. We’ll be in there,” he said, indicating the theater across the street.

  The boy scampered off. “What else?” asked Dale.

  “What do I wear to this opera?”

  “My dear. That is why we’re here.”

  He took her inside the Winter Garden Theater, where the crew was preparing for that night’s show, a melodrama called A Moral Crime. He seemed to know everyone by name, and suddenly Nellie understood why Dale always made a point of mentioning the production side in all his reviews. It gave him unparalleled access to behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt, which his readers craved and which kept him as New York’s best-read critic.

  Dale walked over to the wardrobe director, a man in his late forties arranging last-minute adjustments to the costumes for the evening. The two greeted one another with a familiarity that Nellie instantly recognized as former lovers. Dale whispered something to the man, who dropped what he was doing and returned a moment later with a resplendent maroon velvet dress with matching arm-length gloves, a low neckline, and a tight bodice. With twenty minutes of tailoring, it fit Nellie perfectly. The director also chose a smashing hat and dazzling jewelry that looked beyond anything Nellie could ever afford. Ten minutes with the makeup and hair stylist, plus the right shoes and wrap, and she was ready for the opera. Dale, who’d tried to remain quiet during the fitting and jewelry selection, finally couldn’t help himself and approvingly pronounced her “the envy of Alva Vanderbilt herself.”