She Walks in Beauty (48 page)
A shout went up as the sound of a carriage swung near.
The coachman hopped down from his seat and opened the door.
Lizzie emerged. Her hair had been spun up on top of her head and orange blossoms and diamonds had been woven through it. Her long-sleeved gown was made of white satin and trimmed with lace.
As she stepped from the carriage, she turned her head in my direction. Her eyes widened. And then, I’m almost certain of it, she winked.
I hid my smile behind my gloved hand.
And then they were out of the carriage and into the restaurant. They were gone.
The crowd began to dissipate, and I found myself standing quite alone, pondering the turn of events that had made Lizzie Franklin’s wife instead of me.
“They make a handsome couple.”
I started at the words, and then I turned at the sound of a voice I knew so well. “They do.”
“I always knew they would.” In spite of everything, everything I had said and everything I had done, Harry stood there looking at me as if I were the only person on that city sidewalk.
I searched his eyes, looking for sadness or jealousy or some other hint of emotion. I could find none. None but … happiness. Contentment. “You aren’t … you don’t seem to be … angry. You seem quite satisfied.”
“I am. Everything worked out just as I planned!”
Just as he had planned? “But … ?”
“But what?”
“But—I thought you wanted Lizzie for your own.”
Astonishment transformed his features. “Lizzie Barnes? Me?”
“Yes.”
“She’s rather adorable, but I confess that I have never quite understood her appeal.”
“You never … ? But I heard you, Harry!” How could he lie to me? To my very face!
“Heard me what?”
“I heard you say so.”
“Heard me say what?”
I took a deep breath. Summoned the words that had pierced my heart. “I heard you tell Franklin that, all in all, you preferred Lizzie Barnes to me.”
“You heard that?”
“Yes.”
His face fell and he looked extremely disappointed. “You weren’t meant to.”
Of course I hadn’t been meant to. I pushed my shoulders back and took advantage of my full height. “None of us is meant to hear the things said of us by others.”
He took up my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. “You weren’t meant to hear it because it wasn’t true.”
“It … wasn’t?”
“No. You see, Franklin has always taken from me everything I ever wanted. And this time, I determined that he would not take you.”
“You … what?” I was having trouble making sense of his words.
“What I mean is that, all in all, I much prefer
you
to Lizzie Barnes.”
I found that I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to say.
“Clara? Are you all right?”
I nodded. It was the only thing I found myself able to do. Harry
much
preferred me to Lizzie? He preferred
me
to Lizzie?
“I found something a week ago that I thought you might like. I’ve been carrying it with me in the event that I should see you. May I give it to you?”
I nodded once more, for I still didn’t seem to be able to speak.
He slipped a hand into the pocket of his coat. It came out bearing a slim book bound in what looked like morocco leather. He placed it into my hands. “It’s been signed by the poet himself. Quite valuable, I’m told.”
“Mother’s Byron!” I couldn’t believe it. I opened the cover and turned to the first leaf. Byron’s signature sprawled across the page. I flipped further still through those beloved pages and I came upon Harry’s pansies. Still there, pressed between the leaves.
“My flowers?”
Warmth suffused my cheeks. I shut the book and clasped it to my chest. “How did you ever find it?”
“I bought it. At an auction.”
“But … how did you know?”
He simply smiled in reply. And then he pulled out his handkerchief to dab at my tears.
It really wasn’t fair that he should turn up on a sidewalk right beside me. And confess to me that everything I had known to be true about his sentiments was a lie. A lie spoken on my behalf. On
our
behalf. “I thought you were going abroad.”
“Turn your head a bit. That way.”
I obliged, sniffing.
He put a hand to my chin and dabbed at the other eye. “I was.
Am. I will. Maybe in the spring.”
“I am too. In the spring.”
“Of course you are.”
But I wasn’t going for pleasure. I was going for employment. “I’m to be a companion for a Miss Thompson. An elderly spinster.”
“So perhaps we will see each other.”
“Perhaps.” Though I didn’t know how. And I couldn’t think what else to say to make him understand my reduced circumstances. But most of all, I didn’t know what to feel. My tears had dried up in the confusion, and so I pushed his hand away.
He pocketed the handkerchief. “The most delightful coincidences seem to occur in Europe among expatriates. I knew a fellow once who ran into a compatriot, quite by happy accident. She was traveling as an elderly spinster’s companion. The spinster was the gentleman’s favorite aunt, so it seemed destined somehow that they would meet. And three days later, they eloped.”
“They … they did?”
“They did.”
“
Three
days later?” Somehow I could not seem to catch my breath.
“Why? Does that seem excessively slow? I thought, I mean, it was necessary, of course, to establish their love clandestinely; to walk about the gardens in the moonlight and make eyes over coffee while sitting in one of those Viennese cafes.”
“And … how did his family regard the match?”
“With great felicity. It seemed that he had given them cause to think he had an attachment to some unsuitably wild Italian girl.”
“And did he?”
Harry shrugged. “No. And I don’t honestly know how they had come by that idea. The good fellow had not yet even traveled to Italy.”
“He hadn’t.”
“No.” Harry’s voice had dipped intimately low. “But he went there shortly after. On his honeymoon. With his bride.”
I felt myself blushing. I couldn’t help it. And I’m afraid the warmth swept straight up my cheeks and tingled at the roots of my hair. “But … what about the young woman? She was obviously in reduced circumstances. What did she do to excuse herself from employment?”
He smiled. “Even elderly spinsters,
especially
elderly spinsters, seem to have a deep and abiding, if secret, affinity for true love. Particularly when it involves their favorite nephews.”
“They do?”
“Yes.” He said it with confidence. With finality. With great assurance. And then he leaned forward and kissed me, right there in broad daylight in front of Sherry’s, for all the world to see.
T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
J
OURNAL
—S
OCIETY
A
PRIL 14, 1893
It has been reported that Mr. Harold De Vries, of the Peter De Vrieses, and Miss Clara Carter, daughter of the recently deceased Dr. Willard Carter of this city, met and married in Vienna, Austria. They are honeymooning in Italy. Those who were in the city last year may remember Miss Carter for the elegance and grace she bestowed upon the season.
T
HE
T
ATTLER
A
PRIL 14, 1893
Which society gentleman and young debutante, having become reacquainted by the happy coincidence of being introduced overseas by the gentleman’s spinster aunt, have eloped? Putting to rest rumors that this gentleman had formed an attachment with the daughter of an Italian count, the couple is reportedly honeymooning in Italy. They plan to visit the young man’s sister, a baroness, in Germany before moving to Paris, where he has been tasked with managing his family’s interests in art and antiques. It is speculated that he will soon be managing an art gallery in that city and spending the winters in Italy at an estate the couple recently purchased.
IN SPITE OF his self-righteous rhetoric and racist views, Jacob Riis’s
How the Other Half Lives
electrified the citizens of New York City. At that time, 43 percent of the city’s buildings were defined as tenements and fully two-thirds of the city’s population lived in the squalor and destitution that Riis described in his book. On Valentine’s Day, 1892, Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst took on Tammany Hall politics while preaching at Madison Square Presbyterian Church. The power of New York’s democratic political machine would reach into the 1960s, but the vile oppression and police corruption that was Tammany Hall would be quashed by a grand-jury investigation and the victory of reformists in the city’s mayoral elections of 1894.
The late-Victorian period in America produced our society’s first celebrity culture. Just as they are today, celebrities of the era were created through the media of their time: newspapers. It was between the pages of the daily newspapers that the first society columns could be found and where the luckiest of debutantes could achieve fame for the simple reason that columnists had made them famous. It was not unknown for the most celebrated among them to stay away from outward-looking windows to avoid the mobs of onlookers clustered on the sidewalks below. Even the summer season at the beach in Newport became a publicity opportunity when journalists followed society there on vacation.
Victorian women were very much focused on appearances and achieving a certain “look.” The words
peas, prunes
, and
prisms
were on every girl’s lips in the 1800s in hopes that the pressures of speaking “p” would induce a fashionable bee-stung lip. They also religiously brushed their hair one hundred strokes before going to bed, as well as squeezed their hands into gloves too tight and their feet into shoes too small. But most of their allure was achieved through the use of molding. Through the corset.
Magazines like
Godey’s Lady’s Book
and
Harper’s Bazar
were the
Vogue
and
In Style
of the Victorian Age. And if, in the interests of fashion, illustrations were drawn to exaggerate the chest or minimize the waist to unrealistic proportions, what did it matter? They were only drawings, after all. But to many unsuspecting women, the advertisements became the ideal. And to achieve that sort of hourglass shape, tight-lacing of the corset was required.
The dangers of tight-lacing were many. But one of the most serious effects was anorexia. The narrowing of the waist placed tremendous pressure on the stomach, reducing its volume. The tight-lacer would notice an increase in instances of heartburn and indigestion and recognize that some foods led to an uncomfortable buildup of gas. Soon the tight-lacer would begin not only to eat less food less often, but also to choose only foods that were easy to digest. Foods like toast. Or tea.
The diagnosis of hysteria was widespread in women of the era. It was given for symptoms such as fainting, shortness of breath, insomnia, heaviness in the abdomen, and loss of appetite, all of which were produced by corsets. Many women of the time became addicted to tonics like
Dr. Carter’s
, which mixed toxic ingredients such as chloroform, opium, belladonna, digitalis, and cocaine with a large amount of alcohol. In a time of enormous societal pressure, primitive medical knowledge, and the unquestioned expectation of conformity to unrealistic ideals, tonics provided a method of socially acceptable escape.
It has been rumored for over a century that some women had ribs removed to achieve the perfect sixteen-inch waist, but such claims have never been proven. It is much more likely that those drastic distortions were accomplished by tight-lacing, which would eventually relocate and reshape the floating ribs.
One unfortunate byproduct of tight-lacing was the displacement of internal organs. It is known that tight-lacing diminished the volume of the lungs and repositioned and reshaped the liver. It could also lead to the pinching of nerves and sciatica-like symptoms. The rigors of childbirth, combined with the external pressures of the corset, contributed to a large number of prolapsed uteruses. Happily, the solution was convenient and widely known. Pessaries were readily available by prescription or by mail order through the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog.
It’s worth remembering that when, as a society, we deem something absolutely necessary to beauty or health or happiness, some people will do absolutely anything to obtain it.
1. Have you ever wanted to
fix
one of your physical attributes? Which one? Why?
2. Do you feel any sense of kinship with the women of the late-Victorian era? Did you recognize yourself in any of the characters?
3. How would you describe the Victorian mind-set?
4. Did you discover anything new about this time period? Did anything surprise or shock you?
5. The general Victorian attitude toward the poor can be summed up in Aunt’s words: “Some races are simply inferior to our own. The Irish, for instance. And the Italians. If they’re poor and they live in tenements, then it’s their own fault. If God wanted the poor to prosper, then they would. If they’re not, then they deserve what they get.” How has our view of the poor changed? How hasn’t it?