“
I
'M SICK TO DEATH OF CRINGING before greedy stupid women,” Clara said.
Adam Duycinck fluttered around the premises of the Universal Store like a broken-winged sparrow. “But Claraâthey adore you,” he said.
“I despise them all,” Clara said.
“You're talking nonsense and you know it,” I said.
This quarrel had been building for a long time. I knew how unhappy Clara was, truckling, as shopwomen must, to our customers, who were mostly the rich and powerful of New York. Something in her nature made it impossible for Clara to be insincere. She loathed herself for it. The advice Cornelius Van Vorst had given usâto bow before the powerful, but never to bow in your heartâdid not work for her.
Another more visible reason for the quarrel was the bulge beneath my dress. I was eight months pregnant. I strongly suspected Clara's disgust with a shopwoman's life was mostly a desire to escape from the sight of me carrying Malcolm Stapleton's child.
There was another reason for the quarrel which neither of us was willing to confront: the color of Clara's skin. It made her hypersensitive to orders or remarks from our wealthy white customers that smacked of condescension or worse. A shopkeeper was in many ways a servantâand Clara was determined not to be treated like one. For Clara, freedom was a kind of hair shirt. To be treated like a servant was synonymous with being treated like a slave.
Still another reason for the quarrel was the success of the Universal Store. We were underselling most of the other stores in New York with our smuggled Holland goods. Ladies flocked to buy cambrics and woolens at bargain prices. I was by no means the only merchant of Dutch blood who dealt with Amsterdam via smugglers like Captain Van Oorst. But Clara found my evasion of the law particularly odious because it embarrassed Malcolm.
He had won his contest for the assembly, taking Johannes Van Vorst's seat away from him. That same year, Governor Nicolls had been recalled to England and George Clarke, the lieutenant governor, a longtime resident
of the province, had encouraged Malcolm to introduce a bill, calling for a ban on trading with Canada. The Van Sluydens in Albany and Johannes Van Vorst's friends in New York had violently opposed it. They had challenged Malcolm to assure everyone that he was not profiting from another kind of forbidden trade. Malcolm had no answer and his bill languished while his enemies hooted.
“I've always said you were free to dissolve our partnership any time you chose,” I said. “But I think you ought to give some thought to how you'll support yourself.”
“Don't talk to me as if I were a childâor an ignorant servant,” Clara said. “Of course I've given some thought to it.”
“What are you going to do?” I said, abandoning my superior manner. I wanted Clara to stay in the store. Not only was she popular with the customers, it enabled me to feel I retained a semblance of our old friendship. Now I see I was trying to control her. I was mortally afraid she could take Malcolm away from me whenever she chose.
“How much is my share of the business worth?” Clara asked
“Adam, bring out the books,” I said. I pulled out a chair and sat down, my hands clutching my aching back. It had not been an easy pregnancy.
The little hunchback hauled his ledgers out of the drawer. After two years in business, we had capital in cash and goods worth 4,278 pounds. Clara's share of that amount would be 1,426 pounds.
“I can't pay you that much in a lump sum,” I said. “But I'll be happy to give you part in cash and the rest in credit to be paid off over the next five years.”
“Five years! I could starve in five years. Is that how you treat a friend?”
“We're not talking friendship now. We're talking business,” I said. “I would also want a sworn statement from you that you will not go to work for another store and try to take customers away from me.”
“Didn't I tell you I hate this work? Every time I sell something to a woman like Eugenia Fowler, she makes me feel I've sold part of my soul.”
Eugenia Fowler was the wife of George Fowler, the richest merchant in New York, the owner of the city's biggest distillery. She had her own coach, an Irish driver, and two black slaves as footmen. She lived to shopâand she loved nothing as much as a bargain. She had told all her friends about the Universal Store's low prices and our sales had boomed. This had added to Mrs. Fowler's already imperious style when she visited the store.
I had no trouble bowing low before Mrs. Fowler. I consoled myself with visions of the mahogany chests and walnut highboys I would soon buy for our house, making me Mrs. Fowler's social equal. I confidently expected to have as much money as Mrs. Fowler when I reached her ancient age of forty-something. Clara found no consolation in such a
vision. Without a husband or a prospect of one, she saw no point in filling a house with fine furnitureâor her wardrobe with expensive gowns.
In her loneliness, Clara prayed to the Master of Life to send her a purpose in this world. Prayer came naturally to Clara. Her Seneca grandmother had taught her all men and women were linked by their common descent from the Manitou. Her admiration for the teachings of Jesus had intensified this natural sympathy. She felt impelled to reach out, to help, whenever she saw people in pain or miseryâsights by no means uncommon in 1730s New York.
One winter day a year ago, a red-haired young Irishwoman named Cicely, obviously a whore, had come into the shop. She had no money and her only dress had been torn in a fight with another whore over a customer. She wanted to know if she could buy a new dress on credit. Clara had given her the cloth and the name of a seamstress, telling her she would pay for the whole thing.
I grew livid when Clara told me about Cicely. “We'll become the whore's emporium!” I said. “No respectable woman will go near us. Keep your charity to yourself on Maiden Lane, if you insist on it.”
Word of Clara's generosity had spread swiftly along Pearl Street and soon several other prostitutes were asking her help to refurbish their outfits. She told them to collect their cloth at her house on Maiden Lane. Often she gave them coffee and a mealâand heard their pathetic life stories. In almost every case they had been seduced and abandoned by a man they had trusted.
Others sought help in the form of wool blankets or cloth for a wool shawl to protect them against New York's cruel winters. Many of them were free women of her own color. Clara found it impossible to say no to them, too. She always scrupulously reported her generosity to Adam, who noted it in his ledger as a deduction against her share of the profits. I never made any objection to these charitable gifts but I never offered to share them either.
Now, my quick temper soured by my pregnancy, I proceeded to use these debts as another argument against Clara quitting the store. “Don't you think we should deduct from your share the benefactions you've seen fit to bestow on beggars and whores?” I said.
“How much does it come to?” Clara asked.
Duycinck did some hurried addition. “Sixteen pounds six shillings,” he said. “That's cash from the drawer. Then another one hundred one pounds eight shillings at going prices for dresses, blankets, and the like. Should I charge her wholesale or retail for that?”
“Retail,” I said.
“Malcolm said he'd contribute his one-third share of our partnership to these gifts,” Clara said.
“When did he say that?” I asked.
“Several months ago, when I told him about them.”
“He never mentioned it to me.”
“I'm not surprised.”
“I will contribute nothing to a practice that still threatens us with ruin,” I said, now determined to be completely obnoxious. “Only a few days ago, I saw a whore on Broadway dressed in the same cambric we sold to Mrs. Fowler for an evening dress!”
“I hope she saw it too,” Clara said, unable to restrain her detestation of Mrs. Fowler. More than once she had watched her scream insults at her Irish driver or African footmen because they were not standing at attention, ready to receive her, when she left the store.
“Did you hear that, Adam? Can you blame me for being glad to be rid of her?” I cried.
Adam said nothing. The little hunchback shared Clara's sympathy for the unfortunates of this worldâbeing one of them from birth.
“Damn you both,” I said, struggling to my feet. “You enjoy making me out to be a hard-hearted bitch when all I'm trying to do is protect this business. How do you plan to make a living, Miss Flowers?”
“I think I may become a partner in Hughson's Tavern.”
“With that lunkhead John Hughson? You'll lose your money in a year. If ever I've seen a man who's destined to go bankrupt, it's that dimwit.”
“His wife runs the place,” Clara said. “She has brains enough for both of them. She's a good womanâwho needs help.”
“Oh?” I said. “Has she already received some of your benefactions?”
I glowered at Adam, who paled visibly and admitted that for almost a year we had been carrying money Sarah Hughson owed us for sheets and pillowcases, curtains and tablecloths, purchased when they moved their tavern to a larger building on the Broadway, on the growing west side of the city. Six months was all the credit we normally allowed. But I had been so ill with my pregnancy, I had not given the books more than a cursory glance for a long time.
I looked at the ledger and exploded: “One hundred and fifty pounds! We'll deduct that from your share, you can be sure of it, Miss Flowersâor the Hughsons will see me in court.”
“They've been strugglingâbut they'll pay it,” Clara said.
She made no attempt to explain her friendship with Sarah Hughson, a dark-haired talkative woman whose life story reminded Clara of her own. From Yonkers, a town just north of New York, she had fallen in love with a big muscular farmboy and persuaded him to move to the cityâwhere they soon found themselves with four growing daughters and
little money. They had opened a tavern to supplement his earnings as a shoemaker. Adam drank at Hughson's and he had brought Sarah Hughson to the Universal Store, where her anxious flow of words about herself and her family had stirred Clara's sympathy.
From Adam and from several prostitutes, Clara learned that Mrs. Hughson let the whores use the tavern's rooms free of charge when they could not pay. When Adam dunned her for the unpaid one hundred fifty pounds she had told Clara about their shortage of cash and her desperate search for a partner. They owed money to their distiller and a half dozen other merchants. Adam had gone over their books and assured Clara it was a good investment. With better management and a more respectable clientele, the tavern could clear five hundred pounds a yearâa juicier profit than the Universal Store, whose goods, even at smuggled prices, cost more than rum.
The Hughsons needed cash now to pay their creditors and they would not be thrilled to discover they would have to wait five years for Clara to pay in her full thousand pounds for a half ownership. Clara waited until I departed and asked Adam if I had the money in cash and was deliberately holding it back.
Adam shook his head. “She never lets money sit idle. Almost every cent is out at interest or invested in a ship or a cargo.”
“Does that mean I'm doomed to spend the rest of my days here?” Clara said.
Adam winked. “She could write you a bill of exchange on any merchant in town for the full amount.”
Bills of exchange passed from hand to hand and were used to pay debts. Very often they were never converted into cash. They were a substitute for ready money.
“I'll talk to Malcolm,” Clara said.
Malcolm was at the King's Arms Tavern on Broad Street, reading the latest newspapers from London. Since his election to the assembly, he had become intensely interested in politics both in America and in England. As usual, he was surrounded by a group of young men his own age who were equally fascinated by this complicated subject, which did not interest Clara at all. She asked Malcolm if they could talk in private and they retreated to a corner of the shadowy taproom. She told him about her impasse with me and asked his help.
“You know how hard it is to change her mind about anything,” he said. “It's no easier for me.”
“Then forget the matter,” Clara said.
“If I had funds of my own, you'd have the money in five seconds. But the latest news about my lawsuit is far from promising.”
“We'll forget it,” Clara said. “I can tolerate the shopwoman's lot. It's not so terrible.”
“No!” Malcolm said, seizing her hand. “For your sake I'll dare the dragoness in her den.”
“I'm sorry to add to your unhappiness.”
“I can bear it well enough,” he said.
In the momentary silence, they both knew a great deal was being left unsaid. He was half confessing that he enjoyed his wife in bed, in spite of her disposition. He was also admitting that he liked the life of a public man that I had helped him create.