Boston Jane

Writers are explorers, but like all explorers, we need guides to help us find our way in the wilderness.

I have been very fortunate to have fantastic guides for
Boston Jane
. First, and foremost, a big thank-you to my terrific editors, Elise Howard and Ginee Seo, for believing in Jane. I have the nicest agent in the world, Jill Grinberg, and I can’t thank her enough for her good advice. And a million thanks to Shana Corey, Kate Klimo, Mallory Loehr, Heather Palisi, Diane João, and the whole gang at Random House for taking this adventure with Jane.

A lot of research went into this book and many kind and generous people read the manuscript. I’d especially like to thank Gary Johnson, chairman of the Chinook Tribe, for giving thoughtful and excellent notes. Bruce Weilepp and Diantha Weilepp of the Pacific County Historical Society were incredibly patient with my long-winded questions (as always). And John O’Donnell was invaluable regarding nineteenth-century Philadelphia.

Joan Mann at the Ilwaco Museum Research Library was wonderful with Willapa Bay queries. Scott Eberle and Carol Sandler at the Strong
Museum were fantastic resources on just about everything American! In addition to being an excellent resource on nineteenth-century medicine, Sara Cleary-Burns and Stanley Burns of the Burns Archive were wonderfully supportive friends. Judy Downey and Laura Pereira at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and James Delgado at the Vancouver Maritime Museum helped with my nautical research.

Most of all I’d like to thank Paul and Ginny Merz, the
Boston Jane
Willapa Bay Research Team, for their incredible support—I could never have done it without you! You guys are the best!

My family has been very supportive, especially my dad, who faithfully read each and every draft, and my youngest brother, Matt, a fine writer himself, who went the extra mile and helped me with all the little details that bedevil writers. And, of course, my mom, who helped me survive my very own Sally Biddle.

I want to thank some inspirational librarians and educators for their generous advice and friendship, especially Carolyn Brodie, Maria Salvadore, Diane Ellenburg, Elizabeth Poe, and Mary Ann Paulin. Also some great writers—Chris Curtis and Jerry Spinelli—for being so kind to the new girl! And of course, Ralph and Martha Slotten and Rudy and Diane Cusumano—good teachers every one, and even better friends.

And the biggest thank-you to Louise and Willard Espy for inspiring me to write this book in the first place!

Finally I must thank my husband, Jonathan, for his endless good advice, taking me to the Dixie Chicks concert for inspiration when I was stuck, and overall great husbandness in all things (especially the kissing part).

It’s always good to do the research firsthand!

Papa always said you
make your own luck.

But after being seasick for five months, two weeks, and six days, I felt certain that luck had nothing to do with anything aboard the
Lady Luck
, a poorly named vessel if ever there was one. I had just spent the morning of my sixteenth birthday puking into a bucket, and I had little hope that the day would improve.

I had no doubt that I was the unluckiest young lady in the world.

It wasn’t always this way.

Once I was the luckiest girl in the world.

When I was eleven years old, in 1849, the sea seemed to me a place of great wonder. I would lie on my four-poster bed in my room overlooking the street and pretend I was on one of the sleek ships that sailed along the waterfront, returning from exotic, faraway places like China and the Sandwich Islands and Liverpool.
When the light shone through the window a certain watery way, it was easy to imagine that I was bobbing gently on the waves of the ocean, the air around me warm and sweet and tinged with salt.

We lived on Walnut Street, in a brick house with green shutters, just steps from the State House. Heavy silk drapes hung in the windows, and there was new gas lighting in every room. When the lights were on, it glowed like fairyland. I believed it to be the loveliest house in all of Philadelphia, if only because we lived there.

And my father was the most wonderful father in Philadelphia—or perhaps the whole world.

Each morning Papa would holler, “Where is my favorite daughter?”

I would leap out of bed and rush to the top of the stairs, my feet bare, my hair a frightful mess.

“She is right here!” I would shout. “And she is your
only
daughter!”

“You’re not my Janey,” he would roar, his white beard shaking, his belly rolling with laughter. “My Janey’s not a slugabed! My Janey’s hair is never tangled!”

My mother had died giving birth to me, so it had only ever been Papa and me. Papa always said that one wild, redheaded daughter was enough for any sane man.

As for my sweet papa, how can I describe the wisest of men? Imagine all that is good and dear and generous, and that was my papa.

Papa was a surgeon, the finest in all of Philadelphia. He took
me on rounds with him to visit his patients. I was always proud to hold the needle and thread while he stitched up a man who had been beaten in a bar brawl. Or I would sit on a man’s belly while Papa set a broken leg. Papa said a man behaved better and didn’t scream so much when a little girl was sitting on his belly.

I was the luckiest girl.

How could I not be with Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie?

Mrs. Parker was our housekeeper, and she made the best cherry pie in the entire world. I ate it at every opportunity. Papa always said that I was going to turn into a cherry pie myself one day if I wasn’t careful.

This was Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie: all tangy cherries rolled up in a golden, buttery crust. It was as sweet as clean sheets on washing day, as warm as the chair by the kitchen stove on a cold afternoon. Just imagine it sitting on the plate waiting for you, all piping hot from the oven.

“There is nothing better in the world than a slice of Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie after a long day of stitching up bleeding heads,” Papa always said, and I couldn’t agree more.

After Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie, the best part of the evening was talking to Papa. He had the most interesting way of looking at things.

“Papa,” I said one evening, finishing up the last crumbs of my pie. “Mrs. Parker is complaining that she can’t find any decent help because all the young girls want to take factory jobs.”

Papa leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe and puffed.

“Well, Janey, dignity is very important. Maybe some of these
girls don’t think it’s very dignified washing someone else’s laundry and emptying other people’s chamber pots. What do you think? Would you rather work in a factory or empty chamber pots?” he asked.

It made me think, an activity Papa encouraged. “Speak up, Janey; say what’s on your mind,” Papa always said.

“I don’t imagine it would be very nice to empty chamber pots,” I admitted. But I didn’t think the factory would be very nice either. The women who worked in factories had swollen ankles from standing on their feet all day.

Papa brought home books from the Library Company, where he was a member, and we read them together after supper. My favorite story was “Rip Van Winkle” by Mr. Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle drinks too much liquor, falls asleep under a tree, and wakes up twenty years later. Rip Van Winkle greatly resembled the men of Philadelphia who spent their evenings drinking at taverns until they were senseless. It seemed a very silly activity.

“Papa,” I asked. “Why are men always drinking too much liquor and getting into trouble?”

“It is a great mystery, Janey. But”—and here Papa grinned—“it keeps your poor pa in business.”

And he was right, because sure enough, every evening after the taverns had closed, I’d be woken by some drunken fool roaring that he was bleeding to death on our front porch and would the good doctor please come out and sew him up?

Papa would let me get up and help him, and when we were
finished he would make me a glass of warm milk and honey and tuck me into bed.

“Where is my favorite daughter?” he would say, tweaking the end of my nose.

“She is right here. And she is your only daughter,” I would say with a sleepy smile, sinking into my soft, warm bed. Then I would close my eyes and dream of the sea and Mrs. Parker’s cherry pie.

Truly I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Then my luck changed. Here is how it happened.

Jebediah was Mrs. Parker’s boy and my favorite playmate. He was very clever and instructed me in all manner of useful things, such as how to throw clumps of manure at passing carriages, how to tease the butcher’s dog without being bitten, and how to spit. I am not boasting when I say I was excellent at spitting, the best in the neighborhood.

“You’re better than the pigeons themselves!” Jebediah would say, awestruck at my ability to hit a gentleman’s hat from the roof without the man even noticing. There were fellows who walked around Philadelphia all day who didn’t even know that they had great gobs of spit on their hats.

Jebediah was a fine spitter himself, and quite adept at using the space where his two front teeth used to be to lob a fine one at passersby. He’d lost his two front teeth when he’d slipped on a pat of manure and hit a cobblestone. Papa said that while spitting was a handy skill, the teeth would likely not grow back.

The streets of Philadelphia were our playground. And how
we played! We played with the newspaper boys, and the orphans, and the stray dogs, and Papa said we should, if at all possible, be careful to avoid the alleys where people were dying from cholera. One of our favorite games was lobbing rotten apples at the old tree outside the Biddle house on Arch Street. It was a towering tree that seemed to reach to heaven itself, and we would spend hours trying to see who could hit the highest branch.

One autumn day Jebediah and I were challenged to a throwing contest by two boys from Arch Street, Horace Fink and Godfrey Hale. I am afraid that Horace was a disagreeable boy with big ears, and Godfrey Hale had a weepy eye and liked to stick his finger up his nose as if digging for gold.