The Gilded Years (2 page)

“It’s enormous, but it does look smaller every year, doesn’t it?” said Anita. “Perhaps because we’ve become more comfortable here.”

She was right on both counts. The building, built to mimic the Tuileries Palace in Paris, was monumental in size, with five floors crisscrossed by halls twelve feet wide and almost two hundred yards long. On the roof were six thousand feet of lightning rods to help prevent the incessant threat of fire.

Caroline and Anita headed inside and were greeted by a chorus of delighted voices.

“Where did you spend your summer, Anita?” Caroline asked before they were both absorbed into the feminine gaggle.

“Nowhere exotic, I’m afraid. I was just home in Boston and then on Martha’s Vineyard again. My usual summer holiday in charming Cottage City. At home I tutored Greek to several girls preparing for Vassar’s entrance exam. I hope some will be freshmen next year, though I believe a proficiency in Greek and Latin is less important than it used to be.”

“Isn’t that refreshing to hear? I am wretched at Greek. That class on Thucydides and Pausanias last spring tied my brain into knots, though not yours.” Caroline spread her arms as if she were about to clutch the building and let them drop when several families saying farewell to their freshmen moved by.

“Were you back in the Middle East, Caroline?” Anita asked, fixing her grip on her small bag.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “For most of the summer I was in Syria, then we spent some time exploring Italy and France. I wanted to spend more time in Venice, which is just the most enchanting place on earth, a world floating on water, but Father had me working in his school for most of June and July. Lessons in Christianity, lessons in biology, lessons in just about everything. But August was so dreadfully hot that we had to leave.”

Caroline’s father ran a large school in Syria, and she had an abundance of captivating stories about her childhood there. Anita had been nowhere but the American Northeast and clung to Caroline’s tales as if they were Scheherazade’s.

“Are you rooming with Elise Monroe again, Anita?” asked Caroline, waving to a friend who had just entered the building.

“No, didn’t you hear? She’s left school to be married.”

“Has she!” said Caroline, her attention fully on Anita. “Is she marrying the Browning boy? The one who was such a star at Yale?”

“The very one. He’s from Washington, and they’re to be married there just before Thanksgiving.”

“Congratulations to the soon-to-be Mrs. Browning, then. Though it’s sad that her parents didn’t let her finish up one more year here. She was so strong in drama. Such a knack for comedic delivery. I’ll miss her in the hall plays.”

Anita nodded in agreement and the friends meandered through Main, heading up to the senior hall on what everyone called the third floor, though it was the fourth story of the building, a floor above where they had roomed the year before. They took the stairs, as the elevator had a line down the hall.

“If Elise is gone, then who is your roommate this year?” asked Caroline, taking a piece of paper from her case with her room number on it. “Or do you have a single, too?”

“No, I’m rooming with Louise Taylor, from New York.”

Caroline looked at Anita with surprise. “Louise Taylor! As in Lottie Taylor? I never thought she would be short a roommate. How did that happen? Isn’t she rooming with Dora Fairchild again? They have for two years now. They’re awfully close.”

“Dora stayed on in London, it seems, after her summer travels,” said Anita. “Much to the shock and disappointment of Lottie. Kendrick informed me of everything just a few weeks ago. I thought I might be placed in a single in Strong Hall, but I don’t mind.”

“You’ve already communicated with Kendrick? Aren’t you the lucky one,” said Caroline of their admired lady principal.

“Do you know Louise well?” Anita asked, trying to catch her breath after the climb.

“Lottie?” said Caroline, in a suddenly serious voice. “I would say we’re friends, even close friends, but in truth I know her just like everyone knows her.”

Anita looked questioningly at her classmate, hoping she would say more.

“Well, I know of her money and her palatial house in New York,” said Caroline, picking up on Anita’s curiosity. “It’s right near the Vanderbilts’ on Fifth Avenue, you know. Of course you do. It
was
the talk freshman year. She’s also very close to the Rockefellers. Bessie Rockefeller Strong, who was a special student here in the eighties and is Mr. Rockefeller’s eldest, is a mentor to her. Or so they say. Bessie is the one who suggested Vassar to Clarence Taylor, Lottie’s father. Lottie is also friendly with Consuelo Vanderbilt. She was a guest at her wedding last year to the Duke of Marlborough. You know, the one held at St. Thomas’ Church that the papers made
such
a fuss about.”

She looked at her friend to see if she was still listening and saw Anita’s eyes were wide with fascination.

“You saw the pictures, I’m sure. The
New York Times
even ran that ridiculous piece on the luxury of her trousseau, paying particular attention to her intimate wears. I don’t think the whole of America needed to read about the lace on her ivory corset covers, though it was all quite an affair. People lined up for days in front of St. Thomas’ to get a glimpse of her. Consuelo and her swanlike neck. Not Lottie. She was inside the church along with her parents and her very handsome brother, now up at Harvard. A towhead like her. He’s been on campus before. Younger, but not young enough for it to matter. So I know quite a bit about that, and I know the rumors of what happened between Lottie and
Lewis Van de Graff, of the Philadelphia Van de Graffs, at Harvard last year. Everyone here says she’s very fast. But I don’t really know her as a best friend would, though I’d like to. We’re both in Philaletheis, though I’m Chapter Beta and she’s Chapter Theta.”

Caroline put her hand on the wooden rail and exhaled loudly, as if she was surprised by her own knowledge of Lottie Taylor. Caroline and Lottie had been members of Philaletheis together for three years, the college’s exclusive dramatic society and oldest club, but rooming with a woman once described as a speeding locomotive with hair by the Harvard senior class president was another thing entirely.

“I’m sure you two will get on,” she concluded. “She’s just . . . quite a girl. Yes, that’s a good way to put it. She’s quite a girl.”

Anita had known that Lottie’s family was well-off but could not visualize to what extent. Caroline uttering Lottie’s name in the same breath as John Rockefeller—who had funded the school’s first separate dormitory and was funding a new academic building to break ground that year—was constricting her breathing even further. And then there was Consuelo Vanderbilt. All the Vassar girls followed her doings, but Caroline had said Lottie actually attended her wedding. Anita’s starched traveling dress suddenly felt very tight. She put down her bag and reached up to loosen the stiff lace collar.

“Anita, are you unwell?” asked Caroline.

Anita flushed in embarrassment and bent to pick up her things. “I don’t know what came over me. It must be this awful heat. I feel a bit faint.”

“Come, let’s walk down to senior hall and get settled in,” said Caroline, taking her arm. “Those stairs were dreadful.
One of the maids can fetch you something cool to drink. Of course it’s the heat. They need to open some of these windows and circulate the air.” Caroline said as much to one of the young maids, and the two moved away from the other girls still greeting one another as if they’d been off fighting a war, rather than just separated by a summer vacation.

As they walked to the seniors’ area, Anita thought about her idiocy in agreeing to share rooms with Lottie Taylor. She didn’t want to be housed with anyone prominent, anyone who might attract attention. She needed a nobody from nowhere so she could keep walking quietly through the crowd of Vassar women, well liked, but not too well liked; active in school, but not president of any esteemed club; smart enough, but not first in her class—nothing that would make her shine too brightly or fall too hard. She wanted to be smiled at and then quickly forgotten.

“I’m here in room eighty-nine,” said Caroline, as they reached it. “Will you be all right to walk to yours?”

“Me? Oh, yes, I’m feeling much better now. Just a quick spell. I’m in room twenty-one, right in front of the art gallery,” said Anita, pointing down the hall. “I’ll see you at dinner, Caroline.”

“You’re in twenty-one?” said Caroline, looking down at the hallway’s double marble staircase near Anita’s room. “But that’s the very best senior room, with a perfect view of the Lodge. How did you draw that one? Oh, never mind,” she said, smiling and opening her door. “Lottie Taylor,” she whispered.

Caroline was in a single, a bedroom without a parlor, and a less desirable view.

“I’m so happy to be back, aren’t you?” Anita said, watching her friend walk into her bright, sparsely furnished room.

“I am, too, Anita. There’s no place I love more.”

The girls bid each other goodbye, and Anita turned the corner toward her room, opening the oak door with her free hand.

“Just leave it by the desk closest to the window, please,” she heard a voice say at once. Anita saw Lottie, her back to the door, trying to nail a square of ornate silk fabric above their parlor window.

“I’m sorry,” Anita replied. “You must be waiting for your trunk.” Lottie turned to look at her with a nail in her mouth and nearly dropped the hammer. She took the nail out and gave her an apologetic smile.

“You’re Anita Hemmings! And you must think me the rudest girl in the world. I’m sorry I didn’t turn around. I thought you were Mervis with my things.”

“It’s nothing at all,” Anita said, walking into the already heavily decorated room. “I saw Mervis downstairs, but I’m afraid he’s extremely busy. I’m sure our trunks will be brought up soon. Though I think they’ll have to be attended to by someone else. Every senior girl in Main seems to be after him.” As with most of the accommodations in Main, Anita and Lottie had a set of three rooms with two bedrooms and a large shared parlor.

“Fine, fine. I’m in no particular rush,” said Lottie brightly. “I have all the accessories I need to get our parlor in order right here.” Both girls looked at the floor of their square room, which was covered in fabrics and paintings.

Lottie paused her chatter as she stepped down from her chair. In her white dress, with her blond hair pinned to her head and the dying evening light creating a shadow behind her, she looked as if she had flown down from somewhere much finer, somewhere celestial.

“Look at you, you’re even prettier than everybody said,” she pronounced, approaching Anita. “I remembered you,
of course, but we didn’t overlap much in classes, did we? You’re very Greek and Latin, I hear. I like Asian history and the sciences.” She extended her hand, then held Anita by the shoulders as a mother might do to a child who had just come in from playing outside.

“Just look at your hair,” she said excitedly. “Straight and dark like an Indian’s. I’m very jealous. My life’s desire is to be able to tame this top,” she said, tilting her head. “My mother tried, my maids tried, all in vain, I might add. When I was fifteen, my parlor maid burned about half of it off. I wore many hats that year.”

“I hate hats,” Anita said, laughing.

“Oh, me too,” Lottie said, smiling with her. “So old-fashioned. If it were up to me, I would spend the entire day lounging in my golf costume. I do love golf. A modern woman’s game. Or I’d be totally nude like the French.”

She looked at Anita’s surprised face, enjoying her reaction. “You’re going to be an awful lot of fun to shock. That’s apparent already, and it’s scarcely been five minutes. We need to shake a little of that puritanical Boston out of you before the semester’s end or we won’t have any fun at all.” She spun around the room, already comfortable in her roommate’s presence.

“Did you know a princess lived in this room? A real one. Sutematsu Yamakawa. Or Stematz Yamakawa, as she was known here. She now holds the title of Princess Oyama of Japan. Vassar class of 1882 and the very first Japanese woman to receive a college degree. Ever. You’ve heard the stories about her, have you not?”

Anita shook her head. She was familiar with the exotic name, but it was clear that Lottie knew the better stories.

“A woman of legend,” Lottie declared. “President of Philaletheis. President of ’82 her sophomore year. Third in
her class. And such penmanship. I’ve seen her letters, barely an inch left without text, and she still keeps in contact with her professors. She married the Japanese minister of war. Isn’t that charming? War is so dramatic, it’s hard not to be taken with it. I curse the world that I wasn’t born before the Civil War. I would have been so good at it. Well, at being supportive. As for Princess Oyama, I hear her husband is afraid that she’ll divulge national secrets, but I’m sure she’ll remain tight-lipped. I plan on meeting her one day quite soon so I’ve been practicing my bow. The royals expect you to bend at a full forty-five-degree angle.”

Anita had no idea where one heard that a princess might pose a threat to Japanese national security, but she didn’t doubt Lottie.

“I can’t even recount to you the lies I had to tell to secure us these rooms,” said Lottie, fluttering her eyelashes as if she’d been caught in a rainstorm. “I made up a whole to-do about not being able to sleep unless I could see straight down the dusty drive to the Lodge. Then I added some nonsense about extreme claustrophobia and an incurable passion for the architecture of James Renwick. But it was worth it, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Anita looked at her in awe and nodded.

“I’m simply enamored with Japan. This school is so backward not teaching the Asian languages,” said Lottie, looking wistfully at the room’s décor, most of it picked up during her travels in the Orient.

“Caroline Hardin will teach you off-color words in Arabic if you bring her molasses candy,” Anita offered.

“Caroline can eat all the candy she wants. Arabia does not interest me. The art is poor, and there isn’t enough fish to eat.” Lottie sucked in her cheeks and pursed her lips, making little underwater noises. Anita wasn’t sure which world
Lottie had sprung from, but she was already convinced it was one she wanted to be a part of.