The Gilded Years

by Karin Tanabe

  “That would be me, Mrs. Taylor,” said Caroline, not taking offense. “But I was raised by my parents. Christians. Americans. My father is a reverend and schoolmaster, so I spent much of my life in Syria.”

  “My poor child,” said Mina Taylor, her deep-set eyes examining Caroline as if she were checking an orphan for lice. “Syria, that’s near the Congo, is it not? I read a report that the Belgians are colonizing it rapidly. Thank goodness for that. You must be traumatized by the experience. And all that sun at a young age eats at the skin like leprosy. No wonder your hair went red. You will have to wear a hat every day now or you’ll die young. Come, come now, you must be hungry,” she said looking from Belle to Caroline. “All of you, such thin girls. I thought there was mandatory exercise at that ladies’ college to build sturdier physiques. Mrs. DeWitt, please feed these starving birds.”

  “Oh, Mother, we’re not hungry,” said Lottie from over by the window that looked onto Fifth Avenue. “But I could use a spot of something strong to drink, if you don’t mind, Mrs. DeWitt. Just to fight the chill.”

  “Louise! Please! I can’t take your awful manners so early in the day,” said Mina Taylor, fanning herself rapidly. The girls all looked to the window, where the sky had gone completely dark. “First a surprise visit, and then you want to take to the drink without a thing in your stomach. And put down my new Japanese fan,” she said, looking at the one Lottie had picked up from the whist table. “You should have been a pickpocket. Who knows, perhaps you are. Girls, is my daughter known for thieving around your college? Does she run through the halls at night picking out the prettiest things from your possessions? Please let me know if she has. I’ll have Clarence send a check up to Poughkeepsie at once.”

  “She’s known for quite a bit of fun, Mrs. Taylor, but not that,” said Caroline.

  “We can have both food and a little brandy,” said Mrs. DeWitt diplomatically, nodding to the servant who had opened the front door. “Ladies, your timing is impeccable, because we were just speaking about suffrage, and I imagine you all have very interesting, modern views on women taking to the ballot box. So why don’t you join us and tell us about the talk up there at Vassar?”

  “Yes!” said Nettie, excitedly. “I’ve just become involved with the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was telling Mother all about our work. In fact, I went to my first meeting soon after our visit in Cambridge, Lottie, and of course, Anita.”

  “It’s the most important cause of our day,” replied Lottie. “As you know, we’ve been staging votes at Vassar since the school opened. This year it was mostly everyone for McKinley.”

  “I don’t imagine there are many silverites among you,” said Nettie’s mother, whose dark hair was puffed out like her daughter’s and highlighted with painterly strokes of red.

  “It is quite a passionate time at the school, Election Day,” said Anita. “This year many of us participated in the political campaign, with the Republicans, the silverites, and the gold Democrats all holding their own parades and meetings. We dressed up as the candidates and other important men—Governor Morton, Governor Bushnell, Senator Jones, McKinley, of course—and there were elaborate receptions on campus. It was very entertaining.”

  “It was quite,” said Caroline from her seat on the sofa. “We all attended the reception for Major McKinley, played by Miss Rosamond Brevoort, and watched as some of the other girls paid homage to her dressed as members of the New Women’s Gold Standard Brigade and the Gold Bugs of Chappieville—that group was led by my roommate, Miss Hortense Lewis.”

  “I do miss all that fun,” said Nettie. “But all the voting I do in my lifetime better not take place in Phil Hall at Vassar College.”

  “We’ll win the right,” said Lottie. “And you’ll be there helming the charge, Nettie.”

  “I’d like to see it before I pass on, Nettie,” said a voice from the whist table. It was a Mrs. Hewitt, who told the Vassar girls that she had no daughters, only ungrateful sons who considered suffrage just another woman problem. “So do hurry on, dear.”

  The four girls stayed at the DeWitts’ to dine and spent the evening discussing not only the right to vote, but women’s education and their own hopes for better employment opportunities. Only for a few moments did the subject of men or marriage come up, when Mrs. DeWitt mentioned her and her husband’s recent trip to Chicago, their first since they traveled there for the World’s Fair in ’93.

  “Anita Hemmings is well acquainted with the city, even though she’s never journeyed there,” said Lottie, reaching for an oyster. “She is a dear friend of Porter Hamilton’s up at Harvard. I’m sure you know the family, the lumber Hamiltons.”

  “You don’t say,” said Mrs. Taylor, a note of surprise sharpening her tone. Anita suspected that Mrs. Taylor studied significant last names the way her husband followed the stock market and that the Hemmings name meant nothing to her. She flushed with embarrassment at Mrs. Taylor’s noticeable shock. “Quite a friend to have, Miss Hemmings. I do worry about Lottie, never time to look for a husband. Too dedicated to her studies, my girl.” Mrs. Taylor made a disappointed face.

  Caroline, Belle, and Anita sat bemused at the picture of Lottie as the ardent academic.

  “Lottie,” said her mother, suddenly lighting up with a smile. “I have just had a wonderful idea, as most of my ideas are, and you, my insolent child, will not protest when I share it with you.” She put her silverware down on her plate, nearly chopping off the head of her whole filet of sole with her fish knife. “I insist that while your beautiful visitors are here, you attend tomorrow evening’s opera at the Metropolitan. It will do you good to be seen out socially. Those women’s colleges do keep you so hidden during the season. How do they expect you to meet eligible gentlemen when you are in Poughkeepsie reading all day in Greek?”

  She sighed and looked down at the gold DeWitt monogram peeking out from under her fish. “Is my daughter going to marry a Greek? Is that what it will come to?”

  “No, that’s a more likely fate for Anita,” said Lottie, chewing her bread noisily. “She’s very strong in Greek.”

  “From the sound of it, she is also well versed in the art of finding a proper husband,” Mrs. Taylor responded forcefully.

  “Yes, I’ve met the Hamiltons,” said Nettie, whose husband, a Harvard professor, was acquainted with Porter in Cambridge. “Fine Chicago people. An exceptionally good match for you, Anita.”

  “I should have had you as a daughter,” Mrs. Taylor told Anita, gesturing to the maid to take away her plate. “Instead I have insolence wrapped up in an amusing package—and when did that ever help find a husband? Have you ever seen a newspaper headline saying, ‘Lord this or that marries most amusing girl in America’? No, you have not.”

  Lottie tried to protest but her mother quieted her with a prod in the ribs. “Now, girls, I insist you go to the opera in my place. Lottie, your father is in the Carolinas, and Mrs. DeWitt and I had plans to attend, but you won’t be cross if we do not, Mrs. DeWitt, will you? If we let the young ladies go in our stead?”

  Anita and Belle exchanged an excited glance. They had studied an impressive array of arias in Glee Club, but Anita had never attended a professionally staged opera and Belle had never in New York City.

  “How terribly boring it will be for them, Mother,” said Lottie. “Though I do suppose it will allow me to point out all the dreadful women who do nothing but chase husbands to the sounds of powdered sopranos screaming. That will be entertaining.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Taylor. “You will wear gloves, fix that frightful hair, greet everyone courteously, be polite to the young men, and listen to Mefistofele with an expression of interest on your face, all four acts and an epilogue. That is, if your guests do not mind,” Mrs. Taylor added.

  “As members of the school chorus and Glee Club, Anita and I would be delighted,” said Belle after she had patted her mouth with a starched napkin.

  “Yes,�
� Caroline added. “We are lacking an opera in Syria. I know I will enjoy it. Thank you for the invitation.”

  “Nettie, will you join us?” asked Lottie.

  “I’m afraid I’m heading north in the morning,” said Nettie. “One can’t keep away from one’s husband for too long or he might start to enjoy the solitude.”

  “Young love is beautiful, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Taylor, smiling at Nettie. Her own husband had been in the South for three months and counting, only returning for two days at Christmas to drop off gifts, give her and the children a kiss on the cheek, and make an appearance at his club, but it didn’t trouble her at all.

  Anita’s heart was in her throat as the four girls glided back to the Taylor house in the velvet-enclosed warmth of the family’s Brewster carriage. It was in vogue for noted families to adorn their carriages with their house color, as the Vanderbilts did with their signature burgundy shade. The Taylor family, though widely whispered about as too new to engage in such a ritual, had chosen a deep evergreen as their house color, and the bottom half of the carriage was painted in that hue, the driver in livery to match. Anita’s eyes grew heavy as she listened to the four horses clip-clopping down the avenue and thought about herself the summer before, cleaning a boardinghouse with her mother, wearing her oldest dresses, wondering what a person facing so many limitations could ever really do in life. Perhaps, thought Anita, more than the world would like.

  The next morning found the girls stepping out as tourists, despite the glacial cold and a light snow, stopping in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities acquired by the institution twenty years before. As much as they enjoyed showing off their knowledge of Greco-Roman style, the conversation kept turning to the evening’s entertainment. None of them had brought dresses suitable for an evening at the opera, and the taller Belle and Caroline did not fit into Lottie’s clothes, but Mrs. Taylor had arranged to have gowns delivered for them early in the morning, apologizing profusely to the two girls that they had to wear store-bought clothes.

  “Perhaps Vassar is not the most wonderful place on earth,” said Caroline, twirling in front of the mirror after she had changed that evening. “Maybe the Taylor house in New York is.”

  “Take it from someone who has lived in both,” said Lottie. “The school wins every time.”

  But that evening, for her guests, the fabled Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway and Thirty-Ninth carried off the prize. To the girls, the Italian Renaissance–inspired structure represented the apogee of architecture, music, and society—and they were given a grand introduction. Unlike the general public, who had to enter on Broadway, their carriage dropped them on Fortieth Street, and they went in through the door reserved for box holders.

  “It’s larger than La Scala in Milan,” said Lottie as they weaved through the clusters of men in capes and top hats in the box holders’ lobby.

  A footman in a red tailcoat accompanied them through their personal ladies’ dressing room and the private men’s smoking room to the Taylor box. Anita, Belle, and Caroline stared in wonder at the gilded auditorium with its tiers of ornate boxes—the stockholders’ boxes being the most notable—taking in the grand tier, the dress circle, the parterre circle, the Vaudeville Club in the Omnibus box, a society exclusively for men; and the large orchestra floor. In all, the theater accommodated more than six thousand patrons. Anita looked out at the gold proscenium, designed to replicate an ornate square picture frame, and imagined what was about to unfold on the vast stage.

  The women took their places in the Taylor box, which was draped in gold and red, with a partition that could be removed if need be. They sat as upright as they could on their mahogany chairs with not-too-comfortable black rattan seats, but they would have been happy to sit on the floor.

  Anita studied every corner of the hall, without making it too apparent that she was, so she could tell her mother and sister everything about it one day. She wasn’t sure when that day would be, what with Frederick’s current grip on her life, but she would find a way. Her mother and sister, as passionate about music as she was, had to know that such a place existed.

  “I take back every negative thing I have ever said about Lottie Taylor,” Belle whispered to Anita as the two gazed down at the audience below. Even at the orchestra level, the women had diamond ornaments dotting their coiffures and were wearing burgundy and silver brocades, ivory satins, and even navy velvets trimmed with otter fur.

  “Agreed,” said Caroline from Anita’s other side. “She can dictate my comings and goings all she wants after this.” Anita nodded, though she had never doubted that the good that Lottie effected far outweighed the bad.

  When Lottie had returned from greeting several women in a neighboring box and had finished arranging her dress around her chair, she motioned for them to lean in and covered her mouth with a fan.

  “Ladies, do you see across from us in the east box, with the most direct view of the stage, the woman in the Prussian blue and black silk, diamonds everywhere? That is Mrs. Lucretia Montgomery Schotenhorn, very much the gatekeeper of all this. The man sitting with her is Thornton Force, newspaper columnist. Paid to do, well, you can imagine what.”

  “I don’t think I can imagine,” said Belle, trying not to stare. “Carry on a scandalous affair with Mrs. Schotenhorn?”

  “Oh, Belle, not with the old horn,” said Lottie, covering her face with her fan. “Don’t even say that. It’s well known that her breasts hang all the way to her waist when she’s not wearing a corset. Her maid has to roll them up every morning like slices of salami.”

  “Lottie, that is vulgar! And it is no way to speak about—” said Anita, but Lottie waved her and her kindness away.

  “Plus, it is also well known that Mr. Force prefers the company of men. Young ones, if possible.”

  “Is he a homosexual?” asked Caroline, turning her opera glasses on him.

  “Do not stare!” Lottie hissed. “My mother will behead me if we end up in the newspaper as impertinent spies rather than elegant attendees. And of course he’s a homosexual. Only a homosexual could enjoy both the opera and the company of Mrs. Schotenhorn in such large quantities.”

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a homosexual before,” said Anita, taking the lorgnette from Caroline.

  “Anita, of course you have,” said Lottie. “Rumors do fly about some of the teachers at our dear ladies’ college. I dare say Miss Salmon could be one. I’ve heard it whispered that her friendship with Adelaide Underhill is of an intimate nature.”

  “You’re just fabricating scandal,” said Anita, frowning. Miss Lucy Maynard Salmon was a history teacher at Vassar who was doing her best to replace the practice of rote memorization in her field with primary source research and criticism. She was one of the students’ favorite professors.

  “I wouldn’t dare concoct such a rumor! And think about it a minute, Anita. The great majority of our female professors are unmarried, even the most beautiful like Miss Wood. Our dear physician is one of the only ones who is and she had to marry a Swede. More advanced in their thinking over there. Let’s just state the facts, even the most modern men fear a woman who works. Homosexual women, on the other hand, do not,” said Lottie. “Now everyone stop and speak of something more civilized or we will be in terrible trouble. The opera walls absorb everything, and they report directly back to my mother. I think they know how to send telegrams. And my poor dear mama, one of her main dreams in life is to sit in that box there, where the old horn is so well settled.” They all turned to look at it again, sandwiched between the Morgan and Whitney boxes.

  “But surely you have enough money for that one,” said Caroline.

  “Money has nothing to do with it,” Lottie said. “It is the Schotenhorn box, and it will always be the Schotenhorn box, even if no Schotenhorn ever chooses to sit in it again. They reigned over the old Academy of Music opera house, and though they were loath to buy into the Metropolitan at fir
st, they bit and now hold court here, too. The faces in New York change, but the last names seldom do.”

  “New York is an odd place, isn’t it?” said Caroline, looking across at the ample shoulders of Lucretia Schotenhorn. “She’s a horrible-looking woman.”

  “I think New York is magical,” said Anita. “I’d sit under the stage of the Metropolitan Opera if I were invited to. Or in the attic pulling the ropes. I’ve never seen a more beautiful room. Such a shame that some of the boxes are empty.”

  “I’m glad you like it so,” said Lottie. “Because we will be stuck here for the next four, long, painful hours. As for not using things one owns, that is the sole purpose of owning things in New York. Half of the houses we passed today are unoccupied. And it’s only worse up at Newport. Mother is looking into purchasing a home in California to store her art collection, not that she would ever live there. They’re a wasteful bunch, these women. That’s why after Vassar I’ll be fleeing New York in favor of the world.”

  “Here’s to seeing the world,” said Anita, though she was thinking that if there was one place that could keep her in America, it was New York.

  Lottie turned around to see if anyone might be coming to greet them in their box, then spun back in horror.

  “Ladies, do not look up. I repeat, do not turn around. Mr. Wallace Peters is approaching us through the smoking lounge with the eyes of a madman. He has been pestering me since birth. For several years I had him convinced that we were first cousins and shouldn’t marry, but he produced papers proving otherwise. Can you imagine! Hired a man and everything—Oh, hello, Wallace!” said Lottie, pivoting gracefully in midsentence. “What a most welcome surprise.”