Flirtation on the Hudson

by J. F. Collen

  There was a moment of dead silence.

  Papa, correcting our pastor, in front of our whole parish, right after Mass? Nellie was incredulous. Her father ran his hand over his hair and scratched his ear, but did not retract his statement.

  Father O’Flaherty looked abashed. The whole congregation seemed to hold its breath.

  “What am I saying, son?” Father O’Flaherty asked.

  Son? Nellie giggled to herself. Father O’Flaherty is half the age of Papa.

  The priest rushed over to Mr. Entwhistle and clapped him on the back. “Yer correct: that is just t’ point. Once t’ Blessed Sacrament is put away, this place reverts to its original state—a warehouse!” Father O’Flaherty laughed and Papa’s hearty laugh echoed off the rafters. With more than a touch of relief, soon all the parishioners joined in the laughter.

  Ideas tumbled out, fast and furious: craft fairs, picnics, potluck dinners. Mrs. Entwhistle wrote them on the warehouse slate board. Right then and there they unanimously decided to organize a series of fundraisers. Any feasible suggestion was seized and added to the list.

  In no time at all, the parishioners scheduled a dozen events, everyone volunteering their expertise. Nellie wanted no part of any of them. What could I possibly contribute to a craft fair? she wondered. My crewelwork is unexceptional. The stockings I knit are all spoken for. I barely finished my needlepoint in time for Mutter’s Christmas pillow....

  Her parents urged all their children to participate in their parish’s worthy cause. But Nellie couldn’t think of any particular talent she possessed that would lend itself to fundraising.

  Then a stray comment of Agnes set the wheels in motion.

  Nellie had been entertaining her sisters with an anecdote involving a boy, some pilfered penny candy, a chase, and an overturned barrel of crackers at Hart’s apothecary.

  After laughing with Anastasia and Jonas at the conclusion of Nellie’s dramatic retelling of the incident, Agnes stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Sakes alive Cornelia Rose! You are excessively theatrical. Surely your melodramatic storytelling cannot possibly be the only benefit derived from all your years of reading, attending theater, and acting in school productions?”

  “That’s it!” Nellie shouted. “Our parish can stage a play. I can help. In fact, I can produce it.”

  Mr. Entwhistle embraced her idea. Together they met with Father O’Flaherty to pitch it. Nellie was ecstatic when Father O’Flaherty announced from the ‘pulpit,’ the aforementioned pile of boxes at the warehouse, that the parish counsel and the pastor of Saint Patrick’s in Verplank agreed a play would be an excellent fundraiser. “Miss Cornelia Rose Entwhistle, we would be honored if you spearhead the entire project,” the pastor beamed down at her and Nellie nodded yes.

  Nellie ran home from Mass. She had to find a play. Nellie knew the idea was to include as many of the parishioners in the cast as possible—so they would sell tickets to all their relatives.

  The next several weeks were spent in the library trying to find the right play to perform. At last she decided on a musical revue, writing to several publishers for the rights to perform snippets of a few different plays. With her father’s help, she also chose several songs and purchased sheet music. She and her father scripted an hour show and proposed it to the planning committee. Save one dour old lady who thought any kind of singing other than of church music was scandalous, the parishioners rousingly approved the show.

  Nellie was busy recruiting stagehands, musicians, and artists, and scheduling try-outs, when an invitation arrived for a winter hop, in celebration of Saint Valentine’s Day at West Point.

  She approached her mother. “Lawrence Simmons Baker has invited me to....”

  Mrs. Entwhistle interrupted her. “You may attend. What dates shall I mark in my diary?”

  Nellie stood with her mouth opened. Mutter’s preferences and allegiances are certainly crystal clear, she thought.

  Every morning after Nellie accepted the invitation she threw open her shutters and anxiously checked the temperature. “Freezing again!” she moaned. She looked at the icicles hanging from the eves around her. “Further lengthened, overnight.” She looked out at the dock; ice held ships frozen into place. She expanded her gaze across the river. “Merciful Heavens, no! Ice and more ice all the way across the Hudson.”

  Anastasia lifted her sleepy head from her bed on the far side of the room. “I am confused,” she yawned. “I thought we liked winter, and relished snow and ice.”

  Nellie turned around. “Ice accumulation on the Hudson means less navigable channels for the ships. According to my calculations, the river is just a few frosty nights away from solid ice, shore to shore! I must then abandon all hope, for the ice cutter ships will abandon the river to the ice harvesting industry.”

  Anastasia shook her head with a grin at Nellie’s dramatic hand wringing. “Cornelia, this is hardly news. Why, every winter we long for just this day, when the ice skating parties can begin. Why in the heavens does this well documented, yearly phenomenon perturb you today?”

  Cornelia closed the window and sat on Anastasia’s bed. She sighed. “I yearn for another voyage to West Point! I have been invited to the Valentine Cotillion, and I could not bear it if I were unable to attend.”

  Anastasia looked puzzled. Nellie explained, “The River hasn’t frozen over entirely since 1848. Why, proponents of the shipping industry have argued—we do not need railroads, the river almost never freezes completely. Yet today this ‘rare occurrence’ is happening again! I anticipate the Valentine’s Day Hop with great longing. I have set my hopes and desires on an evening in the arms of the dancing dream, Lawrence Baker.”

  Anastasia still wore a blank look.

  “Stasia, if the ships are frozen into their moorings, I will not be able to attend. I can hardly take an ice boat all the way to West Point,” Nellie cried.

  Anastasia looked thoughtful. “Hmmmm, I never had occasion to travel such a distance in winter, so I never contemplated that impasse before.”

  Despite her impending tragic calamity, Nellie smiled at her sister’s inadvertent pun.

  Anastasia drew her legs, still encased in her eiderdown comforter, up toward her face and leaned her chin on her knees. “Could you not take the dreaded locomotive?”

  Cornelia shook her head a firm ‘no.’ “In addition to my well-principled loathing of the beast, the train would be such a long journey. And so costly. I must purchase tickets in two directions.”

  “Of course,” said Anastasia. “Going there and returning home.”

  “No! The journey necessitates southerly travel, to cross the Hudson near The City where the river is not frozen.” Nellie held down one finger. “Then, I must travel that entire length again on the opposite side of the river, and then even farther north to get to West Point!” She waggled her second finger. “Mutter and Papa will never permit it. Expensive travel is for emergencies only.” Cornelia shook her head again, feeling sorry for herself.

  “There is still a fortnight before the cotillion, perhaps you will be able to find an alternative method of travel, like sled? Or perhaps you will be able to persuade our parents to let you take the train.” Anastasia tried to cheer Nellie.

  “Harrumph,” Nellie sniffed. “Even I do not possess the requisite persuasion skills to convince Papa, let alone Mutter.”

  Anastasia made one more attempt at an optimistic outlook. “Mayhap something will change. Perhaps the river will thaw just before that day.”

  Nellie just shook her head saying, “That is far too much wishful thinking, even for me.” She went back to her side of the room and began to get dressed, gloom and doom written all over her face.

  The weather continued cold, even frigid, which did not lighten Nellie’s mood. Nellie lingered at the breakfast table, slowly stirring milk into her tea, melancholy expression a now permanent feature of her face. The newspapers forecast a cold snap of daytime temperatures in the single digits; Nellie despaired
that she would ever see Lawrence again.

  “Nellie, cheer up.” Anastasia urged her. “At least this morning’s mail contained Obadiah’s weekly correspondence and a nice fat letter from Cadet Baker.”

  Cornelia lifted her head from its doleful position in her hand. “I have not seen either,” she said.

  “Matthias is playing postman up in his room. I do believe he has absconded with the morning’s mail,” Anastasia replied.

  “Stasia! Why did you not snag it for me?” asked Cornelia.

  Anastasia laughed. “You have been moping around for days. I thought searching for it would give you some constructive employment.”

  Cornelia indulged in one more frown, paying homage to her righteous contrariness. Then she laughed.

  “Goodness,” Anastasia said. “My strategy worked wonders, even before you found the missive.”

  Cornelia ran upstairs to Matthias’s room. She caught herself before she tripped over his collection of locally gathered arrowheads scattered across the floor. On the other side of the room, her brother had a green shade visor on his head, garters on his sleeves and was busy stuffing the family’s mail into the cubicles of his brother’s roll top desk.

  “Tampering with the United States mail is a felony, Matthias,” Cornelia said in an authoritative voice. “You could be fined or imprisoned, or both! Give me my letters.”

  “Which ones, Nellie?” Unfazed by Cornelia’s threat, Matthias did not look up when he spoke; he kept his eyes on his sorting.

  “How many have you taken, you artful dodger?” asked Nellie, no longer just feigning anger.

  “Which day’s mail do you want?” asked her brother. He started looking through piles on the floor.

  “I want every single letter addressed to me!” said Cornelia, resisting the temptation to stamp her foot.

  “But then I will have less letters to deliver,” Matthias complained.

  Nellie gave him a look that could kill and Matthias coughed up three letters. As Nellie turned on her heel to exit the room, he caught her skirt. “Oops, one more,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “For goodness sakes Matthias! You deliver all this mail directly to the person to whom it is addressed immediately or I shall report your theft to Mutter.”

  Matthias looked like he was about to protest, but his eyes widened at the thought of their mother’s disapproval. He stood up and started pulling all the letters out of the cubicles, stuffing them in his mailman’s pouch.

  Nellie ran to her room. She scanned the return addresses: one from Lawrence, three from Obadiah and one from Clara, postmarked Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory. Mercy, where in the wilderness is Fort Laramie? Certainly, nowhere I would ever want to go....

  She carefully opened the seal on Lawrence Baker’s enticing, fat packet. In beautiful script using every inch of space, she read:

  My dearest Cornelia Rose,

  It is with heavy heart that I contemplate the icicles ever elongating in front of my window. All the talk among the cadets is of the frozen river and the unending ice. I fear, my dear, your Valentine travels will be curtailed by the un-navigable river. Therefore, I enclose a tintype of myself I have purchased from a local photographer. If I cannot see you my little flower, I will at least find comfort in the thought that you can see me.

  Cornelia extricated the picture of Lawrence carefully from the half dozen or so pieces of stationery that swaddled it, icy gloom again freezing her heart.

  Perhaps it is for the best.

  In an attempt to enjoy this horrible cold that you Northerners seem to tolerate so readily, I endeavored to try ice-skating on the river with a great many other men from my barracks. I am exceedingly coordinated and graceful at all times, as you well know. Imagine my surprise then, when I got on the ice to find myself most perfectly awkward. I have never experienced the sensation of struggling to keep my feet underneath myself! I fear I was quite the comic sight, slipping and sliding, spending more time on the seat of my pants than on my skates. Oh! I had visions of glory before donning these apparatai of disaster! I had pictured myself gliding with my usual grace; twirling, on the ice as I often do in dance. I do believe my natural athleticism might have helped me make a go of it, had it not been for one of my classmates, taking advantage of my temporary ineptitude, sneaking up behind me, whirling around me, startling me, and then actually tripping me! Instead of merely resuming my place on my seat on the ice, up and away I went, arms flailing, limbs splaying in separate directions. Of course, I struck head first as is the case with all unfortunate skaters. I did not know I was hurt until the blood came streaming down my face from a wound above the eye...I will not try your patience with any more of the details.

  I now regret the incident even more on account of the invitation to the Valentine Cotillion and the party at Col. Bowman’s. I fear I am now unable to participate in the festivities as my head still hammers with pain and they will not yet release me from sickbay.

  So, my dearest flower, the frozen river has doubly thwarted our plans. I fear I must alone wait until healing and a thaw enable us to....

  Cornelia could read no further. She bit her lip, catching a sob before it escaped. It is all to no avail! Overcome with emotion, she threw the remaining unread pages on her bed. Less than a second later, she threw herself down in the midst of them, sobbing.

  Agnes stuck her head around the corner. “Cornelia, don’t carry on so. Sakes alive! The ink will run. I have not received a letter from my husband in days...but you do not seem me dramatically wringing my hands, nor carrying on so. Furthermore, you still have two other letters to read....”

  Cornelia paid no attention to her and continued crying.

  Agnes edged closer, staring at the envelopes. “One at least is from Obadiah, I see. I’ll wager it contains several more of those quotations from great literature you find so charming....”

  Nellie looked up at her, surprised by her uncharacteristic kindness. In spite of her frustration and disappointment, her heart melted enough for her to extend kindness in reply.

  “If you have not received any mail from your faithfully corresponding husband, I do believe you should investigate the room of our newly self-appointed mailman, Matthias,” Cornelia said through her tears, punctuated by a loud hiccup.

  “That bilious little wake-snake!” Agnes shouted and turned on her heel.

  Nellie felt a cold gust blow through her glass window and resumed her crying, the scuffling in the other room not fully penetrating her misery.

  Matthias ran into the room and threw a large packet at her. It was heavy and banged her on the elbow. “You can stop crying. I think this is the last of your mail now,” he said and ran out before Nellie could reprimand him again.

  Nellie looked down at the package, and the return address arrested her in mid sob.

  It was from a publishing company. She sniffed. Could it be...?

  “It must be the rights to preform our chosen excerpts, and the corresponding scripts!” she cried. “We can finally begin to rehearse the dramatic pieces.”

  Blues forgotten, she tore open the envelope. A dozen scripts fell out. Nellie picked them up one by one, tearing through the listed titles, summaries, and the cast of characters. The heat of her passion for her new project jump-started her from her frozen inertia.

  Nellie embraced her dual role as producer and director of her parish follies with all the energy and talent she possessed. Her first tasks were completed the same week the parish board entrusted her with the event. She recruited volunteers, put Anastasia in charge of costumes, and Augusta, the budding artist, in charge of the sets. She begged Jonas to play the piano as the musical accompaniment, knowing she could round out the band with other musically proficient parishioners. She persuaded her father to take charge of recruiting singers from their parish’s choir.

  She even approached George Brandreth, via his sister Helen, requesting permission to turn the Brandreth warehouse into a theatre for the performance.

&nb
sp; Now that the scripts had arrived, she would be prepared for the scheduled try-outs and could cast all the parts. Nellie’s eye lingered over the pile of skits and sketches she had chosen, a budding smile warming her face.

  Nellie’s selections for the performance included two dramatic pieces, one farcical routine and two slapstick bits. Now she made a list of additional ‘acts’ she thought would lend themselves nicely to her theme No Song, No Supper, after the comic opera first performed in 1790 as a benefit.

  She moved to her desk, opened her inkwell and drafted a flyer publicizing try-outs. I must announce the would-be actors should prepare selections from their favorite plays, poems, or literary work for their audition. I will consider their audition pieces suggestions for inclusion in the show. At those same tryouts, I will cast the skits and scenes I have chosen.

  I shall become a famous director, Nellie schemed. I will abandon my desire to be a midwife without a backward glance. I was born to be in theater!

  Chapter 29 – True Colors

  Sing Sing, March 1851

  “Cornelia Rose Entwhistle, I called you!” The authority in the voice did not diminish despite the long distance it traveled from the kitchen.

  Nellie again re-read Obadiah’s latest quote from Shakespeare, delivered last night by messenger after they parted, written in his beautiful hand:

  “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”

  She smiled, raised her hands over her head in delight, jumped up out of bed and threw open the shutter. She gave a sharp intake of breath, as she did every morning, in fresh appreciation of her majestic view. Her expansive good feelings wobbled a bit, however, looking at the mood of the Hudson. A one hundred and eighty-degree scan of the panorama subdued her fiery feelings. This morning was grey, with a low cloud cover. The river was flat, the color dull. It was still breathtakingly beautiful to Nellie, albeit chilling to the spirit. The ships were quietly berthed, barely moving in the almost still water—caught and suspended in the frosty cold of the morning. She moored the passionate feelings of her dreams and her exuberance from Obadiah’s quotes of courtship along with them. On to the business of the day, she thought, closing the sash. Risking pneumonia, she stripped off her nightgown in search of her pantaloons.