Clara and Mr. Tiffany (48 page)

O
N SUNDAY AFTER THE TIFFANY BALL, ALICE WANTED TO TAKE
our first subway ride. I didn’t have the inclination, but the first line had been open two months already, so I agreed for her sake. Expecting it to be cold underground, we put on our wool coats, hats, gloves, and overshoes, and headed through brown slush to the Union Square station three blocks south. A woman smoking a cigarette at the entrance was arrested by a policeman right before our eyes. It irritated me. She wasn’t hurting anyone. He wouldn’t have arrested a man smoking.

“That’s enough to make me take up smoking just to support her right, if it weren’t that I detested the idea of breathing dirty smoke.”

We paid our nickels and descended.

“Don’t you feel like a miner burrowing into the earth?” Alice asked.

The underground station was lit with electricity and lined with green and white tiles. “It’s so bright and clean down here,” she said. “It’s like an expensive bathroom.”

The platform fell off into a dark, scary trench of parallel rails, and we could hear the clank and screech of the arriving train. As the mechanical Cyclops with its single headlight roared toward us, it pushed a strong wind ahead of it and we had to hold on to our hats. Everything was engineered so well that the train came within inches of the platform and at the same height. We didn’t have to step up as we had to on other trains.

It followed Fourth Avenue uptown. Joe Briggs had told me that Mr. Tiffany was angry that Twenty-third Street wasn’t one of the express stations, which he thought would bring more people to his showrooms.

“We’re passing Tiffany Studios now,” Alice said in a voice like a bird chirping.

“How do you know?”

“I just feel it calling to me. Can’t you? It’s a happy feeling.”

“Even though you can’t come back yet?”

“I will someday. He promised.”

“Don’t depend on it.”

There was a seed of truth in what his daughter Julia had said—that he didn’t care about anybody but himself. Or he cared for them out of guilt after they were gone. It was clear to me that he was afraid his daughters would leave him. They would leave him eventually, college or not. His tyranny would only bring it on earlier. I wished I had the courage to tell him—it might save him from making an irreparable mistake—but it wasn’t my place.

At Grand Central on Forty-second Street the train turned west with a screech until Broadway, where it turned again and sped uptown.

“Don’t you feel that we’re careening into a modern world?” Alice asked.

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“I read in the
Times
that Mayor McClellan started the subway with a silver controller handle made by Tiffany and Company,” she said.

“Free publicity. Mr. Tiffany learned that from his father, who learned it from P. T. Barnum.”

“Isn’t it exciting to think that we have some connection with the big doings in the city?”

“I suppose. Not that it gives us any notoriety.”

“Just think. Horsecars and subways exist side by side, just like oil lamps and electroliers. We’re in the middle of great changes.”

We lost track of where we were until we saw the sign for Grand Circle station at the southwest corner of Central Park.

“What a romp.” She patted her cheek and her face lit up with a new idea. “We could come here at lunchtime and eat on green grass next summer.”

I tried to acknowledge all of her excited discoveries, but an inexorable heaviness bore down on me. I couldn’t shake off my revulsion at
Mr. Tiffany’s behavior last night, nor could I tell her why he was on my mind.

Way uptown we emerged onto a viaduct crossing a valley of paved streets of a city that hadn’t quite arrived yet. Scattered shacks, poultry farms, and quarries holding out against the uptown march of progress filled the spaces between new smallish mansions.

“How quaint,” I said. “Some nouveau-riche matron serving chicken salad at her afternoon tea in her shiny new dining room might have the mood tarnished by the squawk of a chicken being slaughtered next door.”

Beatrix lived in one of those grand new houses with her family until she would marry. She had confessed an engagement to a literary man, one Clifford Smythe, who was keen on starting a book review section in
The New York Times
, and she wanted to help. When I had told her she was talented with glass, she replied, “That may be, but I don’t want to make it my life.” My face must have shown offense, because she hastened to add, “I don’t mean it wouldn’t be a good life. It just wouldn’t be the right life for me.”

I had to concede, which was another reason I was moody today, pondering the difference between a good life and a right life. Despite that, I did feel the tingling restlessness of the city growing north. We dove back into the earth and rode to the end of the line at 145th Street.

“It took us only forty-five minutes,” Alice said. “We probably went eight miles. Isn’t that a marvel?”

“I prefer my wheel. Now what do we do?” I asked.

“We get out and take a look around.” Unperturbed by my sullen mood, she led the way.

A woman tending a brazier just outside the subway exit was selling roasted chestnuts. I bought a paper cone of them, and their warmth felt good through my gloves. I passed the cone to Alice.

“Better than a cigarette,” she said. “And we won’t get arrested.”

We wrapped our scarves tighter and strolled aimlessly, eating the chestnuts. The first snow, which had been trampled to brown mush in lower Manhattan, still covered the ground here in pristine white smoothness in the fields and vacant lots. It was as though we had gone to another country.

“Doesn’t the snow remind you of Ohio?”

I shrugged.

“Clara, make an effort! I thought of doing this to cheer you up, and you’ve resisted everything I’ve said. I know something happened upstairs in Mr. Tiffany’s house last night.”

“It might break your heart to see him.”

“You don’t have to tell me, but it’s weak of you to let it crush you, and it’s unfair to let it spoil our one and only first time on a subway. Just think of it—1904 will go down in history. The
Times
said that New York will be different from this moment on. Don’t you want to remember it with a little happiness? Where’s some of that spirit that led us up Fourth Avenue? It’s beautiful here. Let me hear you say it.”

“I’m sorry. Yes, it is beautiful. Look at that snowman.”

It had been planted in front of a wooden dwelling with sagging porch steps. Twigs for arms, a carrot for a nose, faceless otherwise, and a rag tied under its chin. Some family took joy in creating something out of nature, freely given to them, freely offered to the neighborhood. Its humility and its long tradition touched me. I wedged two chestnuts where the eyes should be, and a row of them beneath, curved to make a smile. I had just enough.

“Perfect,” Alice said. “They’ll come home and discover it, a wonder of Christmas.”

ON MONDAY I RETURNED
to work on the lotus lamp with some misgivings. Either it would be a jumble of unrelated elements or it would be novel and stunning. I had left off with a fountain of three-dimensional blown buds. Now I worked on the part I knew best, the leaded-glass shade.

Mr. Tiffany liked to show more than one stage in the maturity of a flower. I would give him the elements he liked—fully opened blooms in hues of deep pink, magenta, and red, passionate colors. But I was stumped. How could I suspend the shade around the buds? I drew armatures from the base to the band suggesting upright stems coming out of the water, but no matter how I did it, they were distracting, like a skeleton with redundant bones. Agitated, I tossed down my drawing pencil;
paced around the studio, stifling with the radiator heat; and swept off my desk all the drawings of my failed attempts. I threw on my coat for some fresh air and walked around the block, seeing in my mind’s eye Mr. Tiffany sweeping off the failed vases in the take-out room. I walked to Fifth Avenue, bought a frankfurter from a street vendor, and kept walking all during the lunch hour. No solution came to mind, but that was just as well. Having a design conundrum for Mr. Tiffany to work on might help to solve more than one problem.

AS SOON AS I RETURNED
, Joe Briggs came in to plan the new studio for the company move to Forty-fifth and Madison. We agreed to insist on having hanging light fixtures with opalescent white glass shades instead of the bare lightbulbs, which washed out the colors we were selecting. He showed me his design for a sheet-glass rack with places for labels so we didn’t have to guess the color from the edge of the glass.

“Will it do?” He always had a keen desire to please.

“It’s perfect.”

About thirty I would say he was. He had come to work for Tiffany when he was eighteen, an immigrant from England. In the new building, he was to head a Men’s Mosaic Department at one end of our women’s studio. That way, he could use some of the girls to help on his huge mosaic commissions, and keep them employed if there was a lull in our work, and he would be on hand to turn and cement our own mosaics. It was the first move toward dissolving distinctions between each department, and an important conceptual change by the management.

Toward that end, Joe had been working with Theresa on a mosaic panel of Christ and Saint John. He was teaching her how the manipulation of color, clarity, and surface could create the sense of pictorial illusion in mosaics that leaded windows have. I heard him explain that the use of clear, colored tesserae backed with textured gold foil invites the viewer to look through the glass to the texture.

“That can create a splendid illusion of depth and distance,” he told her. “Use it judiciously, because it will attract the eye away from the opalescent and iridescent pieces, and each of them performs a distinct function too.”

He was taking special pains to teach her nuances, and I was happy to see her be so attentive.

IN THE AFTERNOON
, Mr. Tiffany came in on his regular Monday rounds. Even grief could not stop this man. I greeted him with more than usual solicitude, acting as though nothing had happened in his studio, which he seemed to appreciate. Sorrow glazed his eyes and called forth a surge of compassion and love.

“I have something special to show you. Something
extravagant.
” I whispered the word mysteriously.

He raised his eyebrows in only a modicum of interest.

Undaunted, I continued to speak softly. “You know about hybrids because of your gardening. This is a hybrid in glass. A hybrid of two styles.”

“Oh?”

“Blown
and
leaded glass. A lotus lamp.”

He squinted at me playfully, a totally different man than the one I had seen two nights earlier. “You must have some inside information to know I love lotus plants.”

“Oh, no. Just a wild guess,” I said in mock innocence.

I laid out my two watercolors and explained that I would like the blown buds to dip downward within and slightly above the leaded-glass band, but I stopped there. He didn’t respond. Had I overstepped by involving the glassblowing factory?

“Come with me.”

He walked out of the women’s studio with his quick, short strides, and turned back to make sure I was following him. On the elevator, he said, “It’s high time we had another elaborate.”

In his office, he thumbed through some French design journals until he found the photograph he was looking for, a slender Art Nouveau water lily lamp by Louis Majorelle. The sinuous stemlike vertical standard supported two upright buds and a fully opened flower. All three were exquisite blown forms.

“The buds are similar to what I had in mind. Only mine, ours, would be upside down.”

The caption explained that the inner petals were pale amber and the five outer sepals were coral.

“How’s it done, with two colors?”

“It’s called cameo work. The inner bulb is blown first in one glass, and then it’s sent back to the glory hole of another color. The shape is finalized, and when it’s cool, a glass carver grinds away the top layer in some areas to show the coral sepal shapes beneath.”

“That’s quite involved. Can we do it here?”

“Of course. We don’t believe in limits here.”

He said it in a soft, sad way that acknowledged it to be the same thing he had said to his daughter. I could use this moment to tell him I thought it was unreasonable of him to deny the twins an education, but his expression was already so dispirited that I let the moment pass.

“How will you hold the leaded-glass band in place?” he asked.

“I need you for that.”

He thought for a while, and then said, “Elegance is natural when you follow the principle of repetition. Think about it.”

He sat back and gave me time, showing no sign of impatience.

“Repetition. Of course! Attach the band to similar bronze rods used for the buds only arched higher and wider? Yes?”

“Yes. I knew the answer was in you all along.”

His pride in me was warm enough to ignite my heart.

“How about the shape of a single round leaf for the base?” he said.

“I was hoping for mosaic—”

“Fine. Give it thin bronze veins splayed out from the vertical standard.”

“What are the edges of lotus leaves like?” I asked.

He took up my drawing pencil to show me. “Some varieties are wavy. Parts of the edge lift off the water, while other parts are slightly submerged.”

“Like a girl spinning in a full skirt?”

“Exactly. But remember. Reproducing nature slavishly is not art.”

“I know.” Inside my chest, wings beat, bells rang, so thrilled I was to be collaborating with him again.

“Ha! This one will top the list.” He clapped his hands together and
rubbed his palms. “Seven hundred and fifty smackers, I’ll wager. Keep this a secret from Mr. Thomas.”

OLGA LINGERED AFTER
the others left at the end of the day. She looked down at my lotus drawings and pulled in her lips. “I like those fat buds.” Her voice was threaded with wistfulness.

“What’s on your mind?”

She didn’t raise her head to speak to me.