“And I wish I’d got her daintiness like you.” Pearl had always envied Emma her small stature and tiny waist. Even though she was only slightly taller and heavier than her cousin, Pearl always felt large compared to her.
Emma gathered the hair at the center of Pearl’s head into a switch leaving the hair all around the edge. She twisted the switch and wound it into a coil at the crown securing it with a hairpin. By this time, the tongs were hot. She took a cloth and wiped any soot off the iron, then picked a portion of Pearl’s hair and, starting at the scalp, wound the strand on the round jaw of the tongs. She closed the clamp part of the tongs over the hair and heated it through to make the waves last longer.
Emma unwound the hair, heated the tongs again, and did another section. When all the hair outside the coil was waved, the twist was undone and the waved portions were pulled up into the switch. The coil was wrapped around into a long knot and held in place with pins.
“Can I see?” Pearl asked.
“Not yet.”
Emma turned Pearl towards her so she could work on her bangs. She combed some of them over Pearl’s forehead then parted the rest down the middle. She pushed small side-combs, made of shell, vertically through the bang at both sides about half an inch from the parting.
“There,” Emma said when she was finished. “That makes you look so beautiful.”
When she had first read the article about the Newport knot, Pearl had stared at her reflection in the mirror for, according to the magazine, the face must be studied for the proper arrangement of the large, natural-looking waves of the side-locks. If the face was full and round, the waves should be slightly puffed out at the sides; for an oval face, the waves must be loosely adjusted; and they should be drawn back, but not rigidly, from a long, slender face.
So far, she had thought her face was oval and had loosely adjusted the waves. Pearl was surprised at the woman who now looked back at her from the mirror. The waves around her face were soft and seemed to enhance her cheekbones while toning down her square chin.
“I like it,” Pearl said, happy with the results. It was much better than she had been able to do herself. Emma was right; this was the proper hairdo to improve her looks.
“Good, because this is the real you.”
Pearl returned the favour for Emma, only instead of knotting her brunette hair on the crown of her head, with the waves heading towards it; she set the knot at the nape of her neck with the waves travelling over the crown of her head and down to it. It was secured with a hair buckle.
“What are you going to wear?” Emma asked, as she admired the way Pearl had curled her bangs gracefully over her forehead. “A rainy daisy or bloomers?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Pearl’s taste in clothing had changed since Annie “Londonderry” Choen Kopchovsky became the first woman to journey around the world on a bicycle in 1894-95. Despite never having ridden a bicycle before, Annie took up the challenge of the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company to test a woman’s ability to fend for herself. She left Boston, her husband, and her three young children behind and travelled with a change of clothes, a pearl-handled revolver, and a placard on her bike for the company.
It wasn’t long, though, before she switched her long skirts for the increasingly popular bloomers, styled after Turkish trousers. Annie headed to Europe and biked through France, Egypt, Colombo, and Singapore before landing in San Francisco. She crossed the United States and arrived home fifteen months after leaving and five thousand dollars richer for having made the trip.
Pearl had devoured the article written in the New York World that described Annie’s trip as “the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman.” Since then Pearl had given up the long, full skirts that were heavy and cumbersome, the corsets and petticoats that further limited her movement and the high-collared dresses that forced her to hold her head high or even tilted back.
“What are you wearing?” Pearl asked. She stood in front of the closet and looked at her outfits.
“It’s a lovely day, so I think I’ll wear my light blue dress.” Emma already had on her cotton Combination, which combined a chemise and drawers into one smooth-fitting garment designed to protect her clothes from the oils of her skin. She was donning her corset over it. “Would you please tighten this for me?”
“How can you still wear this?” Pearl asked as she tugged on the laces of Emma’s corset. “It’s a torture contraption and I’m glad I threw mine away.”
“But don’t you miss having something to keep everything in place?” Emma squirmed as she adjusted the corset a bit.
“No. I certainly prefer my ‘functional fashion’.” Pearl tied the laces tightly. With her slightly larger frame, it didn’t matter how tight her mother had pulled Pearl’s corset, she couldn’t achieve the fashionable hourglass figure even when Pearl was on the verge of fainting from lack of oxygen. “I like casual clothes like my rainy daisies, my bloomers, and my travel outfits. I like the freedom of movement that longer skirts don’t allow.”
Pearl rummaged through her overflowing trunk. After reading and rereading Sam’s letters, in which he sometimes mentioned the cost of the clothing and other items he had had to buy as his wore out, she had made a list of clothes and sundries to bring with her for her year in the north. They included one pillow, two heavy wool blankets, one waterproof blanket, and a pair of dark sunglasses. Besides the outfits for her trip she had packed a waterproof coat and hat, one pair of heavy gloves, two suits of heavy wool underwear, two suits of summer underwear, winter hose, one serge, one corduroy and one woolen dress lined with flannel, a cap, a Norfolk jacket, and a wool coat. For her footwear, she brought two pairs of shoes and a pair of low-heeled boots.
Emma hadn’t been sure if she was staying for the winter but to be on the safe side, she, too, had packed winter outfits.
Pearl pulled out a rainy daisy and held it up. It was a style of walking or sports skirt that was perfect for rainy weather. The shorter hemline did not drag through puddles of water when she walked and seldom caught in her bicycle mechanism. She folded it and put it back. Next, she took out a pair of bloomers. She liked the long, full pants that gathered at the ankle or below the knee and sometimes wore them with a knee length skirt. From the way Sam described the terrain she thought they would make getting through the bush much easier.
“I think I’ll wear my beige shirtwaist and brown walking suit.” Pearl pulled on her Combination and then her shirtwaist, a bodice tailored like a man’s shirt with a high collar. It was for informal daywear and worn by many working women. Her brown walking suit had an ankle length skirt and matching jacket. She stepped into her pair of oxfords that came up to her ankle and fastened the three buttons. The day was warm so she decided to leave the jacket in their room. She donned a straw bonnet and tied the strings under her chin.
She looked at Emma. Her form-fitting bodice had leg o’mutton sleeves which were tight from the wrist to the elbow and flared out from elbow to shoulder. With its gathering at the waist, her skirt fell naturally over her hips. She finished dressing with a pair of suede shoes lined with satin and trimmed with steel beads. The heels were two inches high and flared out at the bottom. Pearl had always envied Emma’s small figure, her alabaster skin, her pixie face. She had been a cute child and had grown into a beautiful woman.
Emma had a parasol in her hand. She stayed out of the sun, not liking the way her skin tanned on her face and hands but left the rest of her body white.
* * *
Before disembarking, Pearl and Emma stood on the deck to look at the sight before them. Circle City, with its main street built on a curve of the river sported a row of one and two storey log buildings, the fronts of which faced the water. The buildings on the right went straight, far into the distance but on the left, the street curved out of sight.
The men from boat crew were unloading supplies, carrying sacks of flour down the plank, across the dock, up a slight hill and through the door into
McQuesten’s Alaska Commercial Company store. On the roof of the store, a tall flagpole with a large US flag hung limply in the still air.
Four dogs waited on the bank and a crowd of mainly men milled along the sidewalk that ran in front of the buildings. It was boat day and many of the residents had come out to see who was arriving and who was leaving and to check if they had any mail. A pile of wood sat on the bank of the river waiting to be loaded for the steam engine’s boiler.
Pearl and Emma walked along the dock and up to the main street with the bright, warm sun beating down on their heads. Pearl had her sketchpad under her arm and two pencils in her beaded handbag. Emma opened her parasol.
“Which way should we go?” Emma asked.
Pearl shrugged. “Let’s go in the trading post first and then look around.”
A tall, stout man with sparse graying hair and a large moustache was checking the bags and boxes brought in by the boat crew. He looked up and smiled at them when they walked in the door.
“Good day, ladies. May I help you?”
“Thank you but we just want to look around,” Pearl said.
He nodded and went back to his work.
They wandered through the store looking at the shelves stocked with winter clothing, boots, food stuff like sacks of oatmeal and bags of tea, as well as sundry items like dog harnesses, fishing equipment, saws and axes, pots and pans, and fire pokers.
“What do you suppose that is for?” Emma whispered, pointing to a large round pan. “Looks like you could cook enough food for twenty people in that.”
“That’s a gold pan,” the tall man said. “Miners use it to separate gold from the sand and gravel in the rivers and creeks.
Pearl and Emma reddened as they furtively grinned at each other in embarrassment.
“Um, thank you,” Emma said.
Since there was nothing that a woman of fashion would be interested in, they quickly finished their tour and left.
“So, that’s what Sam meant when he described a gold pan,” Pearl said, as they walked along the sidewalk and around the front buildings to see the rest of the town. They passed an opera house, a library, a hospital, a church, a couple of dance halls, a newspaper building and even a sawmill. They also saw clusters of log cabins along several of the short streets.
The front of one cabin sported a sign the sign: Mrs. Wills Laundry. On the sidewalk in front of the cabin sat a table with a large, round galvanized tub filled with soapy water. A hand-operated wringer attached to the rim and a washboard leaned against the edge. The door of the cabin opened for a stocky woman in a long, checked dress who stepped over the stoop with an armload of dirty shirts. With her hair parted her hair in the middle and pulled back in a bun she looked to be about fifty.
“I want to stop and talk with Mrs. Wills,” Pearl told Emma. In his letters, Sam had mentioned that there were a few white women in the north and she had decided her first article would be about these women. She wanted to know why they came to the gold fields. So Mrs. Wills might be her very first subject.
“Excuse me,” Pearl said. “Are you Mrs. Wills?”
The woman dropped the shirts in the water and pushed a strand of hair off her face with a work-reddened hand. Then she glanced from Pearl to Emma and smiled. “Yes?”
“My name is Miss Pearl Owens and this is my cousin, Miss Emma Owens.”
Mrs. Wills sloshed the shirts around in the water then picked one and scrubbed it against the glass ripples on the board.
“I’ve come here to do some articles about life in the north,” Pearl explained. “And I’d like to ask you some questions.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because I want to write about the women and men who live here in the north.”
“There’s nothing to write about me,” she said, checking a particularly tough stain. “But ask away.”
Pearl opened her sketchpad, the only thing she had to write in and took out a pencil. At the top of her page she wrote, “Mrs. Wills”. “Could I have your full name?”
“Mrs. Hattie Wills, wife of John Wills.”
“How long have you been in Circle City?”
“Two years.” Mrs. Wills tucked the collar of the shirt between the rollers of the wringer. She turned the handle and the rollers pulled the shirt through, wringing the excess water out of the material. She caught the shirt and set it on the table.
“Why did you come?”
Mrs. Wills was reaching for another shirt. She hesitated.
Pearl suddenly realized that she might have gotten too personal.
“I’d be careful if I was you,” Mrs. Wills said, scrubbing another shirt on the board. “There are some people here who won’t take kindly to you asking that question.”
“I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”
“I, personally, don’t mind. I’m from Tacoma, Washington. My husband is a gunsmith and terribly crippled by rheumatism. He wanted to come here and look for gold but his illness prevented him from doing so. There was no way he could make the trip or survive the winters. So I said I would come for him.”
“Have you found gold?”
“Not from a claim.” She waved her hand at the dirty shirts. “I get their owner’s gold.”
“So there is good money in being a laundress?”
“There is until you have to start paying the prices for soap and starch at the Alaska Commercial Company.”
“It’s expensive to live here?” While Sam had told of the high costs of clothes, Pearl hadn’t thought about how much difference there might be in the price of other items between the towns in the north and south.
Mrs. Wills snorted. “I pay $2.50 for the box of starch for the shirts, and that doesn’t last very long.” She held up the washboard. “This is worth about twenty-five cents back home. It cost me $1.50 here.”
“That’s a big difference.”
“And that’s not all. The rent for this little cabin is thirty-five dollars a month and a supply of wood to heat it for the winter costs $225.”
A young native woman came around the corner carrying another large tub. She set it on the sidewalk beside the table and left.
“And I pay my assistant four dollars a day plus meals.” Mrs. Wills rolled another shirt through the wringer. She threw it and the first one into the empty tub.
“Do you plan on returning home to your husband?” Another personal question but she was curious.
“I could never get a job there that pays me as well as this. He’s living with his sister and I send some money to help with his care when I can.”
Pearl didn’t know what else to ask. “Do you mind if I do a sketch of you and your cabin?”
“You’ll have to do it while I’m working.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m bored.” Emma yawned. “I’m going to wander around.”
“Sure,” Pearl nodded absently, as she flipped to the next page in her sketchbook.
The native woman returned with two pails of water and poured them in the rinse tub. She left and came back again with two more. By this time, Mrs. Willis had scrubbed all the shirts and added them to the rinse.
“This is Winnie.” Mrs. Wills said as she placed the wringer over the lip of the tub. “Winnie, this is Pearl Owens.”
Winnie looked up at Pearl and smiled. The smile illuminated the dark-skinned beauty of her face.
“May I sketch you?” Pearl asked.
Winnie tilted her head, a quizzical look on her face. Pearl looked at Mrs. Wills.
“She doesn’t understand much English and I don’t know what sketch means in her language,” Mrs. Wills said.
Pearl walked over to Winnie and showed her the drawing she had done of Mrs. Will and her cabin. She then pointed to Winnie and then to the paper.
Winnie smiled and nodded.
Pearl turned to another page and drew just Winnie’s face, her high cheekbones, her shiny black hair, and her deep brown eyes. When she showed it to Winnie, the girl stared
at it, then looked up at Pearl. She pointed to the portrait and then to herself.
Pearl nodded.
“Let me see,” Mrs. Wills said. Pearl tilted the book towards her. “You’re good. That looks exactly like her.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you talk with Jack McQuesten?”
“I saw McQuesten’s store when I got off the boat. Emma and I went in but the only person we saw was an old man.”
“That’s him.”
“Who is he?”
“Who is he?” Mrs. Wills laughed. “Only the most generous man in the north. He has kept many a prospector from starving while looking for gold.”
“How did he do that?” Pearl found another page and began writing.
“By giving credit to any man who needed it so he could keep prospecting.”
“If he gives credit to everyone how does he make a living?”
“When they eventually find gold they go to him and clear their accounts.”
“And you say his first name is Jack?”
“Actually it’s Leroy Napoleon but everyone calls him Jack.”
Pearl scanned the sidewalk and spied Emma talking with a young woman. Emma beckoned to her.
“I have to go.” Pearl closed her book. “Thank you for your time.”
“Will I get a copy of the article?” Mrs. Wills asked.
Pearl stopped. That was something she hadn’t thought of. “Only if you get the Morning Herald from Halifax.” She opened her book again and handed it to Mrs. Wills. “I’m not sure when it will be published in the newspaper but if you write your address here I will send you a copy when I get one.”
Pearl walked over to Emma.
“This is Miss Clara Foley,” Emma said. “I’ve been telling her about our trip, about Sam and Donald and Gordon living here and that you are working on an article about women in the north. She met Sam and his friends once and she said you could talk with her.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Foley.”
“Miss Owens.” Miss Foley nodded. “And call me Clara.”
Romancing the Klondike Page 2
