The Gilded Cage

SUSANNAH BAMFORD

M EVANS
Lanham • New York • Boulder • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

M. Evans

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Copyright © 1991 Susan Bamford
First Rowman & Littlefield paperback edition 2014

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. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 13: 978-1-59077-370-3 (pbk: alk. paper)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For Rosalind Noonan

December, 1889 Sex and Politics

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

November, 1896 The Propaganda of the Deed

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

April, 1898 In a Warm Room

Epilogue

T
HERE CANNOT BE
a great deal of sympathy for the unhappy woman who stands, in her Paris gown, at the most stylish New Year's Eve party of the season, holding a glass of perfectly-iced champagne by its delicate crystal stem while her handsome, rich, and devoted lover smiles adoringly at her across an opulent room.

Columbine Nash told herself this, and continued nevertheless to be unhappy. Clutching her champagne in one hand and her rose-pink gauze fan in the other, she retreated behind an embroidered screen. There, she gave up and decided to brood before someone found her out. She should have about ten seconds of solitude, if she was lucky, for women, in 1889, did not find themselves alone very often in drawing rooms, though what mischief or misery they could come to amidst such a crowd she never was able to understand. Perhaps 1890 would be different, Columbine thought, taking a sip of champagne. She doubted it.

It was ten minutes to midnight, and the wine-colored velvet curtains of Ambrose and Maud Hartley's second floor salon in their Fifth Avenue mansion were drawn back wide despite the cold. Elaborately tasseled gold cord embraced the folds of rich drapery and trailed fecklessly on the Turkish carpet. Across Fifth Avenue, the trees of Central Park loomed, skeletal branches scraping a pale sky with an odd yellow cast. Clouds scudded across a sulphuric moon.

The conversation of the guests, fueled by Pommery, was brisk and animated. It was the most stylish New Year's Eve dinner of New York society's “younger set,” and the room seemed almost to spin with its dizzying consequence. The shirt fronts of the men were at their snowiest, the beards at their glossiest. The women glittered in their most formal and extravagant gowns, Nile green and ciel blue, Rose Dubarry pink and the moonlit simplicity of white satin. Clouded moiré collided with broché satin, pearl trimming brushed against spangled chiffon. Diamonds and emeralds flashed, wrapped around necks, sewn in bodices, and cunningly secured in coiffures styled after Paris fashion. They looked resplendent, they knew it, and they had not yet begun to be bored by how familiar it was.

Columbine was wearing her best gown, gold satin with rosepink crystal trim, but she felt rather cowed at the display tonight. She turned her back on the wide windows with a shudder. Was she the only one to be bothered by that strange yellow sky? She told herself that her uneasy feeling was because she was rather bored, which she was. Columbine had spent the day dreading this party, and already tonight the company had cooperated by behaving even more stupidly than usual.

Tonight, Maud had seated her—and the
placement
had been deliberate, for Maud always seated Columbine Nash next to the guest most likely to annoy her—next to a bore at dinner. Columbine had picked at her mousse de jambon while Gerald Ferrar had jovially but painstakingly explained to her how her feminine mind was unable to grasp the pure, God-given nature of male superiority and the free enterprise system. There was no need for women to have the vote, he said, his mud-colored eyes concentrating on the course to come. For it was women's nature to
influence,
to
guide
. Their sphere was the private one; through their husbands and sons they could exercise their most delicate of talents.

Columbine swallowed her lobster bisque and only politely pointed out that there did exist some women who were not mothers or wives. There were even some women, she said, smiling graciously, who were of the working class. Of course, this was no argument, as she well knew, for what did such women count to a man like Gerald Ferrar? He ignored her comment and charged on while Columbine tried to catch the eye of her lover, Ned Van Cormandt, who was devoting himself to his neighbor as a gentleman should, leaving Columbine to her turbot and her florid partner.

If there was one thing that set Columbine's teeth on edge—and there were many, many things, most assuredly—it was the heavily masculine guest (oh, they were always men) who insisted on converting her to his point of view while she was trying to eat. Invariably, the naivete of their views, their patronizing smiles, and their refusal to listen to even one word of what she had to say, made her drink too much champagne and desperately look for a rescue which never came. It was difficult to be a socialist and a suffragist on Fifth Avenue.

If only she could be rude! But as the daughter of a British baronet, Columbine was incapable of it. It was one reason she admired the anarchists of her acquaintance. They had an impatience for stupidity which they didn't bother to conceal. Of course, they didn't have much time to waste, as the revolution was just around the corner.

A head poked around the screen. So she'd had ten seconds, at least! Ambrose Hartley beamed at her, her host and an excellent target for any anarchist. Guiltily, she summoned up a smile.

“Ah, Mrs. Nash, I find you out. And your glass is woefully empty. Surely you need a touch more champagne.” Ambrose inclined his curly head at her. He had the gay but desperate air of a former man-about-town who had married a sour wife. Maud Valentine had roused herself to vivaciousness a year ago during their courtship. But once she had caught Ambrose and returned from their three-month honeymoon in Europe, she'd retreated into her silks, her sulks and her chinoiserie. Already, Ambrose had put on twenty pounds and had begun to sport the ruddy complexion of a man who likes his drink.

“No, thank you, Mr. Hartley,” Columbine said with a smile. “I'm content, I assure you. I'm looking forward to your firework display.”

“Only five minutes to go,” Ambrose said with satisfaction. “And then the nineties will be upon us. The decade will bring more miracles, I'm sure. Just think of all the wonders we've seen in the eighties—the telephone, and the incandescent light. The Brooklyn Bridge, and—”

“—and Haymarket, bloody strikes, Anthony Comstock and his campaign against any device to prevent conception, the continued defeat of suffrage for women ...” Columbine smiled to assuage the bluntness of her remarks. She was on Fifth Avenue, after all.

Ambrose looked startled for a moment. Then he tilted back his head and burst out laughing. Across the room, Ned looked up from his conversation with Converse Bowles. His aristocratic face collapsed in a grin, his summer-leaf eyes sharing a private joke with her across the room. He no doubt thought she had sent forth a delightful
bon mot
. Columbine was famous for her wit. Unfortunately, people laughed hardest when she wasn't joking in the least.

“Well, leave it to you, Mrs. Nash, to render me speechless,” Ambrose said. “Yes, I suppose we had all that as well. But America is still the best of all possible worlds, a shining example of progress and Christian patriotism. We will see even more miracles and ingenuity before the century turns, I'll warrant.”

Columbine had seen the same editorial in the World that morning, but she merely smiled and inclined her head. Ambrose was her host, and she was never waspish to hosts. Especially when their wives were so very close to rendering her a large check for her New Women Society. Maud had a tremulous dedication to women's suffrage, although she was nervously waiting until more upper class women found it fashionable.

“And may I say, while we're tête-à-tête here, I'm glad to see that you've settled down, Mrs. Nash,” Ambrose continued. “No more of those lectures on free love. I'd much rather enjoy your lovely face across the dinner table than on a podium.” Ambrose chuckled. “Thank heavens
that's
over. I'm sure Ned is most relieved.”

Stupified, Columbine wasn't sure which comment to take offense at first—the fact that Ambrose felt that she was no longer scandalous, or that he had assumed that Ned was glad she had scaled back her lecture tours. Or was it merely his fatuous tone?

Ten years ago, bishops had thundered against her in pulpits. Five years ago, newpapers had slandered her. Two years ago she had been called a Hester Prynne who gloried in her scarlet letter, a threat to decent society. Today, she was standing in decent society's drawing room. And her leering host was telling her she
belonged
.