Clara and Mr. Tiffany

by Susan Vreeland

  “It might be a long time.”

  IT WAS A LONG TIME. Summer crept upon us with no news. We perspired out our worries about the concessions in front of electric fans, but the men held fast. I remembered one strike placard in particular. WOMEN DON’T NEED EQUAL PAY. There was some consolation in that. It implied that we had been getting it although I still couldn’t be sure.

  Julia was absent from work awhile to find a home for her younger brothers. I suggested that she go to the University Settlement, where Edwin had worked. Through that agency the younger boys were placed at a farm in Delaware where they could earn their board and go to school, and that would keep them away from the ne’er-do-well brother and father. I was impressed with how she handled everything, and raised her wage permanently to that of a full apprentice.

  Still waiting for a settlement to the strike, we made our first weekend trip of the season to Point Pleasant. Alice and I waded up to our waists in the sea under a cerulean sky with wisps of white. Dashed by a few strokes of distant ships, the horizon invited lavish dreams of our lamps and windows finding homes on foreign shores. Even on our own shores, lamps carried the touch of the Tiffany Girls into homes that they could never enter in person. The natural world rolled on untouched by our little dreams and our little dramas, and the buoyancy of being lifted off my feet in the great wide universe lifted my spirit as well.

  “ ‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll,’ ” I said.

  In the privacy of the broad ocean with the breakers swallowing Lord Byron’s words, Alice said, “I have a secret to tell you.”

  “Is it about William?”

  She blushed.

  “It is, isn’t it?” I took her hands and swung her around in the water.

  “It’s about Mr. Tiffany.”

  I let go and stood still.

  “You mustn’t tell Lillian. I asked him if I could return to work for you.”

  “And not have that privacy and freedom you have now? You want to come back to deadlines and rush orders and angry men?”

  “I love glass better than enamels. And I’m not adept on the potter’s wheel. It’s not a joy for me. Neither is Miss Lantrup.”

  “Oh, how I’d love to have you back. What did he say?”

  “That I would have to wait until someone quits in your department. Apparently, one concession that he’s made is that your department can’t grow.”

  I let out a howl and cut the water with a broad stroke, sending up spray that wet us both. My puny act of emotionalism made no effect on the great bosom of the sea.

  THE NEXT WEEK, Mr. Thomas came up to the studio looking unbearably smug.

  “The war with the union is over at last,” he announced.

  I was determined to remain calm, whatever the verdict.

  “On what terms?”

  “The union has agreed to let you make windows, lampshades, and mosaics just as you’ve been doing, so long as you don’t increase your present number of employees.”

  Just as Alice had warned. I held tight to my resolve.

  “I’m glad it’s over, and I appreciate you and Mr. Tiffany holding out for our rights, but I’m disappointed about that limitation. The department should be allowed to grow when needs increase. What will happen if we get more orders than the twenty-seven of us can fill?”

  “You’ll have to give them to the men in Corona.”

  “What! So inferior specimens will go out to the showroom and be sold at the same price as ours?”

  “Mr. Tiffany was forced to make that concession.”

  “I want Tiffany Studios to produce the very best quality of work. Sending floral orders to the men’s department won’t do that. It would be detrimental to the reputation of Tiffany Studios.”

  Mouse that he was, he raised his shoulders in a noncommittal, it-can’t-be-helped gesture.

  “It was also decided that the men won’t be making their own designs for their geometric shades.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll be making them.”

  “So to keep them working I have to design shades simple enough for them to produce at the cost of my time designing for my own department? Was that sour irony your recommendation?”

  After a sheepish, inappropriate smile, he mumbled, “It was decided.”

  “May I hire a design assistant?”

  “Only when one of your girls leaves. It’s the new policy.”

  “That’s squeezing the fruit that feeds you.”

  “You have to understand how staunchly Mr. Tiffany argued on your behalf. He did not concede to the demand that the men’s wages be raised to be above the women’s, or that the women’s wages be lowered. In light of that, the limitation on the size of your department is a concession you’ll have to accept.”

  “I just foresee trouble down the road.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  He stood up to go.

  “One more thing while I’m here. You step out of line every time you go to Mr. Tiffany for approval of a new design. That’s got to stop. Mr. Platt and I don’t want him involved with your operations at all. He’s too self-indulgent. Come to me.”

  “You’re not an artist.”

  “I’m the manager.”

  CHAPTER 40

  LAURELTON HALL

  MRS. TIFFANY DIED IN THE SPRING. WE WERE NOTIFIED WHERE the funeral would be by a bulletin that circulated through the departments. Some of the girls thought it better not to go because they didn’t have black waists to go with their black skirts and they didn’t want to be disrespectful.

  Nellie came, wearing a borrowed shirtwaist much too large but black. So did Julia, wearing the same borrowed black she had worn at her mother’s funeral. Olga covered her white waist and black skirt with her father’s black coat buttoned up. She must have sweltered in the church. Agnes, unable to control her sniffling, sat straight-backed in the pew in front of me next to the three Misses—Stoney, Byrne, and Judd—all properly attired. The church was packed with Mrs. Tiffany’s uptown society friends, as well as nurses from the women’s infirmary.

  I had preserved Mr. Tiffany’s monogrammed handkerchief wrapped in tissue paper in my dresser drawer all the years since I cried for Wilhelmina in his office, a keepsake never used again. Now it was a damp lump. I took surreptitious peeks at his still, downcast profile, newly lined by suffering, between the weeping twins, and ached for him.

  After the service, the press of people funneled down the aisles to pass in front of the casket. Mr. Tiffany made brave efforts at being gracious to everyone, but his responses were vague, his voice thin and scratchy, and his eyes unfocused. It would be a long time before the spark of light would animate them once again.

  Off to the side stood little Dorothy, momentarily alone, in black, with black stockings sagging on her thin legs. I approached her.

  “I don’t expect you to remember me. I work for your father.”

  “I know. You came out to the Briars. We found a spider’s web.”

  “I’m sorry about your mama. I’m sure you and your papa are very sad.”

  “She wanted to stay at the Briars and never live in Laurelton Hall. He didn’t love her. He doesn’t love us.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does.”

  “He does not! He kept us on the top floor all winter so we wouldn’t hear her groaning. We couldn’t get near her.”

  I crouched down to comfort her, but she fled in tears, slipping through the crowd. How easily a parent’s motive could be misconstrued by an injured child.

  HENRY AND I STOOD at the dress-circle rail at the Metropolitan Opera and looked down on the orchestra section as we always did, and there was Mr. Tiffany—with a woman.

  “Who’s that with him?” I asked.

  “Miss Julia Munson. She used to work in enamels, but now she designs jewelry in his private studio.”

  “Right there in his house?”

  “They’ve been working together there for several years.”<
br />
  “While Lou was busy dying one floor below? Isn’t six months kind of soon to be seen in high society with another woman?” The insinuation escaped sotto voce.

  “He has to have women around him, just like he has to have flowers. Rumors about a liaison with the wife of his chemist have circulated for a long time, and he’s had a courtesan in Paris for years.”

  I refused to be shocked, at least outwardly.

  At our late-night dinner afterward, Henry volunteered that Mr. Tiffany was out of control.

  “He has horrific regrets. Battles with his older daughters. Bouts of solitary drinking. I suspect nearly every night.”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Henry took a sip of wine. “It’s disgusting.”

  “The daughters know it?”

  “How could they not?”

  We ate for a while in concerned silence.

  “What can we do?” I asked.

  “I wish I knew. It seems more sinister than normal bereavement.”

  “No one thinks his own bereavement is normal, Henry.”

  He made a gesture of acquiescence with his fork.

  “He’s spending a king’s ransom on Laurelton Hall. It’s turning out to be a live-in mausoleum to Lou’s memory. Extravagance is his only relief from grief, and without Lou to temper it, he’s going wild. I wouldn’t be surprised if some visiting journalist would dub it the American Taj Mahal with water closets. The ironic thing is that she never wanted to live there.”

  “His youngest daughter said as much to me at the funeral.”

  “I know I can trust you not to repeat this. In my opinion, the reckless spending of his father’s fortune assiduously earned over half a century is the most irresponsible, self-indulgent thing Louis could have done. I would even call it insolent, considering that his father covered the losses of Tiffany Studios ever since its inception.”

  That was a sickening and unexpected earful, not that Henry said it, but that he had cause to say it.

  “Have you been there, to Laurelton Hall?” I asked.

  “Yes. It’s a vast showplace of artistic profligacy. The place and the man are one. If there ever was a time to design extravagances, Clara, it would be now.”

  “I’ll certainly keep that in mind. Tell me about the house.”

  “It’s as wide as a long city block, with a clock tower to keep his staff and children punctual.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And an Islamic minaret. Most of it is spectacular, but to my sensibility, the whole of it is excessive.”

  “It’s not the sleeker, modern idiom you espouse?”

  He guffawed into his plate. “Hardly, but the central fountain court is exquisite. Pure Tiffany at his most exotic. Moorish, Persian, Turkish, you name it, light and airy. The octagonal space soars three stories to a ceiling of shimmery glass scallops laid like fish scales. The upper and lower balconies are supported by colonnades, which surround an octagonal stone pool, somewhat like an Islamic bath, with calla lilies and floating lotus plants.”

  “Good information for a lamp design.”

  “In the center of the pool is a graceful blown vase, as tall as he is. Water is propelled upward inside, and slides down the outside while rotating color wheels beneath make it change hues.”

  “Then he did make one five feet. The new gaffer, I mean. I saw him make a three-foot one. Afterward, Mr. Tiffany didn’t even compliment him. He just wanted a taller one.”

  “That’s the way he is lately, demanding and autocratic. A dark side is emerging, and the new estate gives him an arena to give it unrestrained expression.”

  “How dark?”

  “You judge for yourself. A mural he painted for the smoking room called The Opium Fiend’s Dream depicts a decadent pasha lounging on silk cushions with his opium pipe. Nightmarish visions float around him.” Henry’s hand flicked the air as though he were painting. “Serpents, winged beasts, monsters eating humans, men sadistically hacking at victims, human heads impaled on spears and dripping blood.”

  “How horrible! What could he be thinking?”

  “These might be excused as fantasy, but I can’t excuse the portrayal of the life cycle of naked Oriental prostitutes from girlhood to lewd womanhood to ravaged old age. It’s too vulgar for words. Imagine painting that as a warning for his girls.”

  A cold shudder streaked through me.

  ON MONDAY I WENT to the company library and studied lotus blossoms in a book of flowers. Such an elegant, simple shape. Each outer petal of a bud was like a heart turned upside down. If Mr. Tiffany loved the lotus, maybe a lotus lamp might give him a moment’s reprieve from grief.

  The book gave bits of cultural history. In Buddhist tradition, the lotus represented purity floating above the muddy waters of unbridled desire, and a Confucian scholar wrote, “Although growing from the mud, the lotus is unstained.” It was the perfect flower to invoke at this time.

  I remembered that in the pond in Central Park, lotus buds were plump and round and stood upright on tall stalks, all head on one delicate leg, although some heads were so heavy that the stalks arched over and the buds nearly touched the water. I drew some buds pulling their stems down into an arc. There wasn’t anything unique about buds in flat leaded glass. Instead, their roundness made me want them to be three-dimensional. Blown forms! Why not?

  I hurried down to the showrooms, where I found pond lily, one of the classic and popular blown lamps. Up from a bronze socle of lily pads, twelve bronze tubes rose close together and then arched out and down in all directions so that the blown bud on the end of each tube hung upside down. The shapes were more like narrow trumpet vine blossoms than water lilies. All the better. My bud shape would be new. It was only the concept that I had wanted to verify.

  But how should I position the buds in relation to a leaded-glass shade? Was I designing myself into a conundrum? Whatever I would create, I wouldn’t go to Mr. Thomas. I wanted no limits. Mr. Tiffany’s profligacy gave me permission to be extravagant. I would go to him.

  CHAPTER 41

  FIRE

  AN ENORMOUS CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATED WITH BLOWN-GLASS ornaments was the centerpiece of the reception room of Mr. Tiffany’s Seventy-second Street mansion. After attending half a dozen Tiffany Balls there, I was perfectly comfortable. Only Alice, Agnes, the three Misses, Minnie, Beatrix, and Mary seemed equally at ease. Olga walked around the Persian carpets, not daring to step on them. It seemed painful to her to be in a place of such ostentatious wealth and alien style. Her troubled expression revealed some anguish tumbling in her mind. She looked around the room in near panic until she saw the magical butterfly and Japanese lantern window. Then, comfortable with something she could relate to, she was rapt, as still as stone.

  Olga was proof that Tiffany Studios was more than an art industry. It was a great social laboratory where a waif formerly curling feathers at a dollar and a half a week could speak to the son of the King of Diamonds. The poorest of my Tiffany Girls had the same delight in color that I had, the same yearning for recognition in the small world of our studio, the same hope for love that shone in their eyes this gala evening.

  Alice came toward me with a tea plate of petits fours.

  “No sign of the pasha,” I said.

  “You’d think he would at least make an appearance for five minutes.”

  Nellie, Theresa, and Mary were especially disappointed not to be greeted by him. They wanted him to see them in their best frocks, and I wanted them to have the experience of interacting with him in this social setting. I waited twenty more minutes.

  “I think I know where he is,” I said to Alice. “I’m going up.”

  I went through the doorway into the small vestibule; climbed the narrow, crooked stairs; and pushed open the carved double doors. A fire in one of the cave-like openings in the cedar-trunk chimney cast an apron of light over the floor. The rest was eerie darkness. Mr. Tiffany was slumped in a low chair that was draped with an an
imal skin, watching the huge logs burn. He raised his glass, took a long draft, and noticed me approaching, apparently without surprise.

  “Excuse me. I thought you might like a report of how everyone is enjoying the evening.”

  “I don’t give a sailor’s damn whether they are or not.”

  His intended crassness lost its effect because he couldn’t get out the s’s in sailor’s without lisping.

  “Don’t stand there like a servant girl wringing your hands. Yes, I’m plowed, and I’m going to get more plowed, so don’t act shocked. Sit down and have a drink with me. I need some company.”

  “There’s plenty of company downstairs.”

  “Puh! I’m in mourning. I don’t go to parties.”

  He held up a cut crystal decanter to look through it to the light of the fire before he poured. “Is your friend Alice downstairs?”

  “Yes. We came together. We live in the same boardinghouse.”

  “How cozy.” Sarcasm colored his tone. “She’s a pretty kitten. She’s doing some fine work in Corona.”

  “Your daughters aren’t downstairs. I thought they might serve as hostesses.”

  “I asked them to. They don’t mind me anymore. They hate me now.”

  “I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Don’t placate me, Clara,” he said without turning to look at me. “You don’t know a thing about what goes on here.”

  “Perhaps I do. I know you, and I can imagine them.”

  “Has Belknap been giving you an earful? The two of you are getting pretty chummy. He’s queer, you know.”

  “You see what you look for. That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. You’re prissy in your own way too.”

  “Louis, pull yourself together. Just because you’re miserable and drunk doesn’t give you the right to slash everyone who’s loyal to you and who cares that you’re suffering. I know what it is to lose a spouse. You survive by remembering the good times. You don’t wallow in regrets.”