Parrot and Olivier in America (30 page)

We? I stared at his brand-new frock coat and gray waistcoat. Then I saw the invitation contained the directive that I bring my servant and his wife. Peek would send a carriage for us all. My heart sank at the sheer awfulness of it--Olivier de Garmont delivering a woman like a common pimp. Quite clearly Peek had plans for her.

So I was completely prepared, on the morrow, to find the buxom Mistress Parrot aboard but I was not at all happy to learn that we must also be accompanied by her mother, who would chew raw garlic and parsley while giving her harsh commentary on the passing scene.

"Broadway, puh!" she cried, as we passed Canal Street. She declared it no better than a cart track in Aubagne.

I could hardly blame the Americans for the coarseness of a French peasant, and yet all this malodorous
egalite
depressed me awfully. She wished to converse with me, and I could not stop her. Could monsieur not see where a drunken coachman had argued the best way to get around a bog? Or cross that stream? And that disputed track--it set off as a detour, then wandered down the hill like a soldier who has lost his wits. He was drunk, monsieur,
sozzled
, there he is, off into the glen. Mathilde,
regardez
the wilderness,
the fol Americain
has built a house.

"Please, madame, I would prefer that you did not hit my knee."

And then she was in a huff. It was too grotesque for words, and I certainly had no idea that this would be the most significant day of my life. It was October, and the trees were aflame with passion and all I could think was that the air was filled with molds and fungi that would precipitate a
crise
.

It was not hot enough to make my nose bleed, but it was a very rough journey to Peek's farm which was located at what may have become by now--if the New York Commissioners' Street Plan has any real authority--land bordered by East Forty-eighth on the south and East Fifty-sixth Street on the north. Emerging in bad temper from the wilderness, I found a silky driveway, a wooded ravine, a mature orchard, a clear narrow rocky stream running through native grasses. We rattled across a dam wall, came upon a rise from which we enjoyed the grand prospect across the East River to Blackwell's Island. Were my spirits lifted? Not at all. Along the shores of a little cove grew a number of pretty trees in low situations, quite green, very still, and through the leaves the white sand of a beach. I viewed them sourly. When, in a moment, I beheld the Peek mansion I was pleased only because its size reduced the old woman to stunned silence.

In the grand foyer I renewed my acquaintance with Mrs. Peek and her stringy daughters.

"So," said my creditor immediately, "we must take the tour."

This, it appears, is the American custom, to escort one's visitors from room to room like an auctioneer. Even the meanest object will have some story, and the grandest ones a price. I noted that the so-called library held no books, the furniture had been copied from engravings, and, of the six paintings in the thirty-four rooms, three of them had been painted aboard the
Havre
. And this was the home of one of New York's foremost citizens.

The arches into the dining room were trimmed with green and autumn leaves. Entering, one was immediately confronted by a great number of vases, also dressed with autumn leaves. Everything, in short, was very gay.

The native flora was not, however, the room's chief decoration, for that was a friend of the two daughters, Miss Godefroy, a visitor from Connecticut who clearly carried in her veins the triumph of those Vikings who had raided the British Isles so many centuries before and whose miscegenation had produced such startling effects that three hundred years later they had been the subject of those mad maps of hair color bequeathed to my mother by her brother Astolphe.

Seeing Miss Godefroy, my opinion of New York was changed immediately--that a creature like this one should walk the earth, straw-haired, blue-eyed, straight-backed, tall, strong, like a goddess but modest and gracious, perhaps even a little shy.

At the meal she was somehow placed between Mistress Perroquet and her mother while the Peek girls regaled me with what I do not know. I gave these two girls my full attention, noticing only that they both told me that Miss Godefroy was a daughter of Mr. Philip Godefroy who sat on the board of the Wethersfield Prison. What could be more perfect?

There was food. We ate.

There was piano and flute. The Miss Peekses' voices had not improved since the
Havre
.

After dinner I strolled with the master in his grounds, admiring his pigs and discussing my forthcoming trips to Philadelphia and Albany, so the best part of the afternoon was gone before I found myself walking with Miss Godefroy. How this happened I have no idea. I was delighted, shocked that this impropriety should be so easily permitted, fearful my companion would notice how far we had strayed from the terrace, where I noted Peek in deep conversation with Mistress Perroquet. I could not raise myself to protest.

Around us was the American autumn, in all its drunken wildness, like the colors of a savage or that impossible bird, the antipodean cassowary whose likeness Monsieur had sold to my mother while pretending it was a gift. Beyond the drive were carpets of green moss covered with red leaves. Miss Godefroy and I walked side by side, and now, so far enough from the house that no soul could see us, she spoke to me quietly. In French.

Good Lord. What music, what an endearing way to speak. She was sorry she did not have her Moliere so I could read it to her as it should be read, not in her poor colonial voice.

Was she flirting?

To ask the question is to not understand her.

She took each step as the first one of a dance. She kicked the red leaves and made them rise like birds. By the shoreline I saw Peek in close conversation with both Perroquets. What devilry he planned I could not say, nor could I hope to intercede. I had arrived, quite unexpectedly, in Paradise.

Enclosed by a landscape that no painter could portray, before my eyes lay--or rather shone--magnificent New York. At every moment steamships passed.

America.

IV

THERE WERE NOW four letters to be written. The first, in every sense, must be to the extraordinary Miss Godefroy. I made several drafts, whittling it like a convict with a love token until all the tumult of my heart was hidden in its plain design. In fifty-seven English words I informed the angelic creature that I was planning, as soon as this week, to pay a visit to the prison at Wethersfield, Connecticut, and was hoping I might there have an opportunity to not only interview her father on the subject of the prison he commanded, but continue our conversation of Moliere, whose works I would carry with me in a fine edition.

Next, a short note to my secretary, instructing him to transcribe this to a gilt paste card. To my relief he obeyed.

I then wrote to Miss Godefroy's father, introducing myself as the French commissioner and hoping I might interview him at his soonest convenience.

That done, I drafted a letter to the Quakers in Philadelphia, who expected me on Crooked Billet Wharf this coming Friday. I canceled them forthwith. It was to Mr. Vaux I wrote, asserting (not untruthfully) that I had heard so much in favor of the solitary system at their Eastern Prison, I thought it wiser that I first visit Wethersfield, Auburn, and Sing Sing, whose different systems, all being of the whip side of the aisle, so to speak, would provide a firm basis of comparison with his Eastern Prison. I hoped this change of plan would not discommode him or Mrs. Dougdale and the members of the
Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of the Public Prisons
, but it would ensure I would finally come among them as a better-educated man.

Only with Blacqueville might I have been concise: Dear Friend, I am in love.

My mother was not to be confided in, of course--she had never forgotten the case of the Comte de Heudreville, who had returned to Paris with an American wife--and it made no difference that the poor creature was a Catholic or that her watercolors were of considerable delicacy. My mother's concern that I would
faire comme Heudreville
was so pronounced that seldom a letter passed between us where she did not inquire of the habits of American females. I was accustomed to replying in a manner that might seem, to those not privileged to know the Comtesse de Garmont, unduly frank.

"Dear Maman," I reassured her that Sunday night, "I have been here in New York and am leading the most active agitated life it is possible to imagine. I am overwhelmed by courtesies, burdened by visits, etc., etc. If I can escape the pursuit of
my numerous friends
, I throw myself on my ideas, set myself problems to solve, and lay the foundations of a great work which ought someday to make my reputation.

"I take my place at table, always served with meats more solid than well prepared, and around which are seated some very pretty persons, occasionally accompanied by some very ugly ones. You asked what is thought to be the great merit of women here. Well, Maman, it is this--to be very fresh-complexioned. Beyond that they have very few--or, rather, they have none at all--of those exterior charms which contribute so powerfully to elegance of figure, and whose noble form so pleases the educated eye.

"I don't know why I speak of their physical qualities, for you did not precisely inquire after them, and they are above all remarkable for their moral virtues. In general they are of very severe principle and irreproachable conduct.

"Evenings I go out into society. I see several American families fairly often, particularly that of Mr. Peek, our banker. He is the richest businessman in New York. I am received with infinite kindness in the Peek family. Mrs. Peek is a charming woman, as attractive as can be and flirtatious as you earlier foresaw. But I do not know and shall never know if her coquetry goes further. I am to go in several days to visit the prison at Sing Sing, which is only a few miles from New York. From there I travel to Wethersfield, Connecticut, and its famous prison, attended as always by M. de Tilbot's man whose legible hand allows you to read this very letter.

"If I went into society with intentions of pleasure or seduction, I could regard as lost the time I pass here. But as my resolutions are entirely opposed to this result, I find only profit in it. In the first place I inevitably learn the English language, for although many women affect to speak French, there are at least twenty with whom I have to speak English.

"I expect to write at greater length when on my way to Mr. Godefroy's prison at Wethersfield."

Of this dissembling I was not at all ashamed. Was it not my mother who engineered my departure from my natural society, and now I was here, was I not still a man? I might be safe from the so-called July Revolution, but I was not safe from love.

I lay in bed, the cool linens against my heated flesh, in the most delicious frame of mind. When my countrymen imagined America, they thought of savages and bears and presidents who would not wear wigs. Who among them could have conjured Miss Godefroy in all her beauty of form and elegance of mind, her wit, her delicacy, her slender ankles amidst those mad red leaves? Such were the unexpected turns of life, that I who had begun this journey in awful mourning, now lived again in the most delightful way.

I went to sleep very happy and in the morning, having been most surprisingly and properly waited on by Master Larrit, I directed that he copy the letters and have them dispatched by whatever was the fastest method. The good fellow undertook to spend his Sunday walking up to Peek's farm.

I tipped him generously. Shortly after, he was off inquiring about steamers to Sing Sing where Elam Lynds was--as I had heard a thousand times--using the labor of two hundred convicts to build their own prison. He would be the first step on my way to the Godefroys of Wethersfield.

By evening the servant had purchased our tickets at the slip, and had informed Mme Parrot that he would be away in pursuit of his duties. In all this he was exemplary, and there were no more signs of the rebellion I had glimpsed in his eyes aboard the
Havre
. He made inquiries about boardinghouses in Sing Sing and the climate in the mountains along the Hudson, ensured we were well provisioned, pasted labels on the trunks, and visited Schermerhorn Row so he would know exactly where we would board Mr. Fulton's famous steamer. I did nothing more myself than attempt, unsuccessfully, three sketches of Miss Godefroy.

Then two things happened in quick succession. First I was visited by Mr. Peek, who exhibited a coldness toward me that I found extremely odd.

Only when he produced my unopened letter to Miss Godefroy did I begin to understand.

"She has departed," he said.

"So soon."

"Exactly as expected," he said severely.

I looked into his gray eyes and saw there a mighty stew and puzzle.

"She has returned to her own home," he said. Then I understood. Peek was a father. He had sat me at lunch between his own two beauties. Had he imagined I would marry one of them? He was insulted on their behalf.

"Very well," said I. "Do you have another address where I might reach Mr. Godefroy?"

"The prison," he said.

I thought, You are an ill-mannered fool if you think you can stop me like this--and as for your dreadful daughters, are you a madman? And yet I must soon begin the work of pacifying him, for he would be an inconvenient enemy.

None of this was pleasant, but then the morning post brought a most desperate letter from Mr. Vaux in Philadelphia, in which he threw himself on my mercy, explaining that a meeting of fifty gentlemen had determined the course of my visit and it would be a distinct embarrassment to the cause of the penitentiary system in general and the Eastern Prison in particular if I was not at the Crooked Billet Wharf on the date I had promised.

So I must go to the damn Quakers. What agony to postpone the pleasure I knew was truly mine. For I had seen her soul, the excitement in her cheeks in which, illuminated by the glow of blood, were revealed the palest, finest, most exquisite markings--not freckles, not even of that genus.