Clara and Mr. Tiffany

by Susan Vreeland

  The next day the weather cleared, though it was still as indecisive as a restless cat—cloudy, sunny, cloudy again. Alice wanted to nap on the big swing by the river, and William was off sketching, so that left Bernard, who was reading on the porch, to accompany me on another ride. How richly convenient. How deliciously dangerous. Nevertheless, I would exercise extreme caution.

  We set off to explore the back road and found a brook coming out of a wood and emptying into Beaver Dam Creek half a mile away. At the top of the hill we took in the panorama of New Jersey spread out like a map, with little rivers running into the sea, and then strolled along the stream into the woods.

  Light came through the canopy of leaves and branches, illuminating droplets of rainwater and shining on a rill spilling off some rocks into the stream. Bubbles formed instantly.

  “Look. Live cabochons, only infinitely more fragile.” They danced gaily on the surface until they were caught up in the current and swept away.

  “What’s a cabochon?”

  “A glass jewel with a rounded rather than cut surface. We use them in windows.”

  I left my wheel and went looking for wood violets. Instead, I found some nearly wilted pink blossoms close to the ground.

  “What are they?” Bernard asked.

  “Trailing arbutus. I think it’s also called mayflower.”

  “Why that name?”

  “Whittier called it mayflower in a poem because it was the first flower seen on these shores by the Pilgrims.”

  “It’s also called ground laurel and is the state flower of Massachusetts.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “With a brother like Alistair, I’ve absorbed a few things.”

  “Then why did you ask me if you already knew?”

  “I wanted to hear you tell me.”

  I feigned exasperation despite feeling flattered.

  “It would be a little tragedy, don’t you think? These flowers, blooming with every ounce of energy for all the world to see, if no one came to see them.”

  “Depends.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “On?”

  “On what you want out of life.”

  “I want beauty.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. That’s not all you want.”

  It irritated me that I could be so easily read, and he couldn’t be.

  “Maybe they bloom because they can’t do otherwise, for the sheer joy of blooming.”

  “Like you,” he said, and picked off a stem with a clump of fragile blossoms, held it to my nose so I could catch the fragrance, and then secured it in my chignon. His fingers grazing my ear tickled pleasantly, and I wished he would touch my neck too, but he stood back to look at me.

  “There. Now you’re a true nymph of the woods. Do you know that your whole face shines and your eyes sparkle beautifully when you see something beautiful in nature?”

  “How can I know that?”

  “You could look into a still pool. Just like Narcissus, always looking at and thinking about himself.”

  I didn’t like his insinuation.

  “No, I’m not just like Narcissus.”

  One word altered the mood of the day. I thrashed back out of the woods, mounted my wheel, and headed downhill, an erratic rhythm in my chest. The mayflower fell out of my hair and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hear that I was too preoccupied with thinking about myself, that badgering, dissatisfied self. I didn’t want to hear that I was a nymph but, too bad, so sad, sorry, I’m engaged. Or I’m somewhat married. Partially married. Weirdly married. Depending on the season. Whatever shoddy, sham, feckless explanation he would give.

  CHAPTER 34

  THE WEEK

  TRYING TO CONCENTRATE ON THE WORK BEFORE ME THAT MONDAY, I thought that round clear or green cabochons could suggest morning dewdrops or bubbles in a stream over which dragonflies hovered. Long, narrow cabochons in blues with streaks of white, placed vertically, could suggest rain, the weekend at Point Pleasant rendered in glass. I held smooth green glass under blue ripple glass to see how it would convey the depth of a stream. Building backward from the surface to hint at deep currents suggested something else to me—the currents in a woman’s soul, my own. I was only half conscious of them, but there they were, those submerged layers of motivation, the substratum more dictatorial than the surface.

  My mental meanderings were interrupted by Frank wildly urging me to go to Mr. Tiffany’s studio. I went immediately. Spread out on his carpet lay watercolors for six conjoined, vertical landscape windows depicting a stream coming down from distant mountains with pines, birches, daffodils, and iris on the banks, and lilies in the water.

  “You certainly pulled out all the stops on this one,” I said. “Classic Tiffany.”

  “I just finished at one o’clock this morning. Do you like them?”

  I laughed at his question. “Of course I do. They evoke an idyllic dreamscape. And I love iris.”

  “Good. The dimensions will be twenty-eight inches wide by six feet each. A client needs them installed for a wedding. Can you get them all finished by Saturday afternoon? They would need to go to the glazing department first thing Monday morning.”

  I expelled a puff of air. Absurd. He never should have accepted such a rushed commission, but his ambition was too strong to turn it down.

  “I’m not forcing you. The men refused to take it on, saying it was impossible.”

  Oh-ho! I knew how to work him, but he also knew how to work me. His exploitation was transparent, and his sheepish grin revealed that he knew I saw it, but I had ambition too, and he knew that as well.

  “Can you give me ten minutes to decide.”

  “Ten and a half.”

  “It would need a glass piece poured specially for the zigzag of the stream coming down between those mountains.”

  “I’ll get Mr. Nash on it today. I’ve done a study to scale of that area for him to use. It will be ready on Friday.”

  “May I take the watercolors to show the girls?”

  He was already rolling them.

  My heel beat madly against the floor of the elevator as it clanked and crept upward. “Come on. Get going!” I said out loud, and the elevator boy looked offended. “Not you. This blasted machine!” I spent the minute praying that the girls would say yes. It would depend on how I presented it. I would have to pull out all the stops too.

  I laid out the six watercolors, asked Agnes to step into the large studio, and said, “Tools down, please.

  “You know we’re not part of the union. The bosses of the Lead Glaziers and Glass Cutters’ Union are not advanced enough to include women in their ranks. That means our jobs are not protected. I have to keep designing things that please The Powers That Be with such a speed that you are kept on as employees. The minute the incoming work diminishes, the Lieutenants downstairs will force me to choose which of you to let go. Meanwhile, you have to keep up your present high standards in selecting and cutting, and keep up your speed. In this, you’ve done admirably, and our department is now attracting attention outside of New York City. I have a chance to sing your praises in the state capital, and will do so again in Boston shortly.”

  Murmurs rippled through the room.

  “However, we have to continue to prove our skills. A splendid opportunity to do that has been presented to me just now. A client wants these six large landscape windows—aren’t they beautiful?—by Saturday afternoon.”

  “Six days!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” sputtered Miss Byrne.

  “You mean five and three quarters,” said Miss Precise-as-a-Pin Judd. “What time on Saturday?”

  “I’m sure he would give us until five.”

  No one asked why it was needed so quickly, even Miss Judd. They simply trusted that it was so.

  “The Men’s Window Department scoffed at the notion that it was possible. They refused the commission. You can imagine what injury this would do to Mr. Tiffany’s reputation if he had to deny so importan
t a client. He has offered it to us. He is not demanding that we do it, but just think how firmly it would establish us in the company.”

  “A feather in your cap,” Agnes said in a half-enthusiastic, half-begrudging way.

  “I would not accept the job without your consent, because I see no way it could be done unless we lay aside everything else, turn our whole force to this challenge, and put in extra hours. Some years ago, it took us a month to do four conjoined windows for a client’s conservatory, but we’re a bigger department now.”

  “And mightier,” Nellie put in.

  “And we’ve learned a lot since then. You must understand. It would demand that everyone would come in at six forty-five every morning and work until six o’clock every evening. You will be paid for the extra time. I’m sure you agree that one of the greatest pleasures in life is doing what other people say you cannot do. Mr. Tiffany has given me ten minutes to decide. We have three minutes left.”

  “Yes, by heaven, we’ll do it!” Nellie cried in the stentorian voice she had developed since her humble-pie approach asking for work.

  “Yes. Yes!” came other voices.

  “There’ll be wigs on the green, Nellie, when your Patrick finds out,” Mary McVickar warned.

  “No matter that. To be sure, we’re doin’ it, and we’re doin’ it up grand.”

  “Then Nellie, you take our answer back to Mr. Tiffany. Tell him the Women’s Department is eager and proud to take on this challenge.”

  “I’ll tell His Majesty he’ll have the thing in a blink and he’ll faint dead away at its beauties, and I won’t be lyin’.”

  And she was out the door.

  “We’ll call these windows number one, two, three, and so forth.” I pointed to each one. “We’ll start on the cartoons immediately. Mary, panel one; Minnie, two; Carrie, four; and Mamie, five. Agnes, will you do number three and help us mark in the cutting lines on all of them?”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll do panel six. Set up your easels in pictorial order so you can harmonize or match your colors with the adjoining ones. As soon as the lead lines are in, two girls on each panel can do the tracing, numbering, and cutting the pattern pieces. Don’t sit doing nothing while your partner does the whole job. Pattern cutters, work top down and bottom up.

  “Miss Stoney, will you select for the iris and daffodils at the bottom?”

  “I can start while someone else is selecting for the top,” she said.

  I gave out the assignments for the rest of the selecting. Fannie Gober, panel one; Miss Judd, two; Carrie, three; Mary, four; and Marion, five.

  “I’ll do panel six until the first of you is finished. Then that person will take over mine. Assistants, you can keep on with your current projects until your cartoon is ready for you. Selectors and cutters, if you don’t have an imminent deadline, help Miss Judd on the twenty-eight-inch dragonfly shade. It can’t wait until next week. Everything else can. Put cloths over the raw glass you’ve been using for your present projects so you don’t get the palettes of colors confused.

  “Miss Byrne, Bertie, Olga, Theresa, Nellie, and Anna, you’ll do the cutting. Assistants, we’ll use copper foil for the flowers and leaves, so get them sliced, acided, and waxed now. Anticipate each other’s needs, and step lively.”

  “Yur tootin’ we will, and won’t those scaredy-cat men be ashamed!” Mary said.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to show up the men. It was that I wanted to astonish Mr. Tiffany. This would certainly keep his gratitude and affection strong. Besides that, I was excited by the challenge.

  I took Beatrix down to the basement to write out my glass orders. I chose twenty fifteen-by-twenty-eight-inch pieces of opalescent glass in cerulean, Antwerp blue, and light blue-violet with streaks of pale pink, salmon, and white for the upper reaches of the sky, and tints of lavender for hills. That would get them started. I needed to study the watercolors more to determine what else we needed.

  “Oh, ’tis a beauty, that,” Albert said, and tapped one piece with his blunt finger. “Excellent choice. ’Tis just like the sky o’er the sea of a summer’s eve in Ballynahinch, County Galway.”

  “That’s nice. You must do us a favor and bring up our requested glass as soon as it’s asked for this week. We have a tremendous challenge before us.”

  “Begging your pardon, but I have a challenge too, the solemn responsibility to faithfully measure the dimensions of every piece, large or small, opalescent or single-color cathedral glass, textured or smooth, in order to charge them according to their warranted price and worth and coolers, especially the coolers, against your departmental account so as to tally—”

  “Yes, I know, Albert.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” he said peevishly. “So as to tally your expenditures of this vitreous substance in panel form. There it be.”

  Beatrix was polite enough not to snicker.

  “May I sign once for everything I order this week to save time doing it for each request? Then I’ll just send down sample colors and you can send them right up.”

  “That would be highly irregular and unprecedented, perhaps even dangerous to my long-standing system of accurate record-keeping.”

  I signed, and next to my signature, I wrote, “for all orders through September 13, 1902, my only signature, take it or leave it.”

  “Tedious old man,” I muttered to Beatrix in the elevator. “Remind me never to send Mary or Nellie down here. We’d never get them back.”

  “He’s hungry for conversation,” she said. “He’s down there alone all day, just shuffling glass in and out. He wants so much to be important.”

  “Doesn’t everyone? That’s what this whole effort is about, Beatrix.”

  Upstairs, I devised a schedule. Prepare cartoons by Tuesday at ten o’clock. Cut patterns and apply to glass easels by Wednesday at ten o’clock. Select and cut one-third of the way down all panels by Thursday at ten o’clock. The sky and three tiers of hills would have the largest pieces, so that would go quickly. Do the middle ground by Friday noon. That would leave the foreground iris, daffodils, floating lilies, moss, rocks in the river, the most complex portion of the panels, for Saturday, the last day.

  I dispatched Julia with an order for copper foil, acid, beeswax, and lead cames; studied the cartoons; and made a list of types of glass we would need, then started on panel six.

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, an hour earlier than usual, Merry prepared a big breakfast with double the rashers of bacon for me. I arrived at the studio first. As a precaution, I posted a note on the door for the scrubwoman, written in large letters: Elsie, There is no need for you to clean the studio this week.

  Everyone arrived at quarter to seven, and we fell to work immediately. Agnes was the first to finish her cartoon, so she began marking in the cutting lines, which had to be done artfully, with the lines outlining rather than crossing figurative elements. She had to avoid creating difficult-to-cut pieces and areas that would be too busy with lead lines. She also had to avoid creating a multicolored piece that would be impossible to find. Only an experienced hand could do this well. Miss Stoney began putting in lead lines on another panel.

  The moment Agnes finished her cutting lines, she shooed me away from my panel and took over the watercoloring so that I could go down to order glass. It was more than I’d asked her to do, since she wasn’t officially part of this department. I never knew what to expect from her.

  I took Beatrix again, and prayed that there would be twig glass in dark green for long pine needles.

  I ignored Albert’s windiness and pulled out glass sheets from their wooden slots while Beatrix recorded the code numbers. I was back upstairs in a flash and took up the watercoloring on my cartoon again, which freed Agnes to mark the cutting lines on Mary’s panel. When Carrie finished her cartoon, I handed over the watercoloring on my cartoon to Mary so I could draw in the lead lines on Carrie’s panel.

  Juggling tasks in this way, we were finished with the cartoon
s by ten o’clock, on schedule, and the assistants began marking the carbon copies, two girls for each window, and the numbering and pattern cutting began. Selectors were already holding the glass up to the light for the sky and hills.

  BY WEDNESDAY MORNING, the selecting and cutting had fully begun. Cutters Nellie, Anna, and Miss Byrne were faster than their selectors, so I put Carrie, Mary, and Minnie as second selectors on different portions of those windows, and still, with Olga’s help, Nellie, Anna, and Miss Byrne could keep up, leaving the finish grozing to be done by assistants when necessary.

  In the afternoon, hurrying too much while cutting a piece, Olga sent a glass shard deep into her finger. Carrie and Mary worked with her quite a while to get it out with tweezers, to no avail.

  “The bloody thing’s got to be lanced,” Mary concluded.

  I lit my alcohol flame and passed a razor blade through it. Theresa, she of the feather boa, gave her an apple to bite into. Olga shook her head no.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as I sliced her skin.

  She winced but didn’t utter a sound. I spread open the cut, and Nellie pulled out the sliver with tweezers, nearly half an inch long.

  Tears ran from Olga’s eyes, and her bottom lip was bleeding where she had bitten it. “Thank you,” she said weakly.

  “Now go hold it under cold water. Carrie, make sure it’s wrapped well. Take home these extra bandages, Olga. Keep it clean.”

  AT DINNER EVERYONE asked how the work was going, and I gave a report.

  “Tomorrow is your accounting day,” Bernard said. “Have someone else gather the figures, and I’ll do everything tomorrow night, wages and materials.”

  “I was hoping you might.”

  “Don’t give it another thought.”

  I looked for the same expression I had seen on his face between the flames of the beach fire, but it wasn’t there. He was all business.

  ON THURSDAY, I had Minnie step in for Carrie while she gathered my accounts from the various departments. Meanwhile, I selected on window number six. No Irish songs wafted through the studio. Everyone was concentrating, rising to the situation nobly. No one complained about the extra hours.