The Gilded Years (29 page)

There are great men and women in our community, Anita. We are doing things that could change the world. The voices of men like William are rising. In three years, it will be a new century, and the Negro men who are leading our race into it are right here in Cambridge and Boston, around me. Don’t you want to fall in love with one of them? Don’t you want to be a leader here? I can’t think of any woman as intelligent as you, or as suited for such a role.

Your future has me panicking, Anita. I worry that you’ve lost perspective about the way the rest of the world works. Vassar has been a great thing for you, but you cannot forget what life is like outside her walls. Do you remember the man we saw at my wedding? The distinguished Mr. Archibald Grimké? A few years back, he married a white woman, and they had a daughter together. The couple soon separated, and his wife took their daughter, Angelina, back to the Midwest. Years later, she returned her to Boston, to Archibald, before moving home and committing suicide.

The rumor now is that the daughter is a homosexual at the age of seventeen. I am not saying that I am against unions between white and Negro—after all, you and I are products of such relationships, though they weren’t quite the same back then, were they? Perhaps one day a marriage like the Grimkés’ will be celebrated, and a love between you and Porter will be accepted. I hope it will be so, but do not deceive yourself now. We do not live in such a time, and
you are as aware as I am, Anita, nothing good can come of such a marriage.

Enjoy your final months at Vassar. I know how fond of it you are. Then come home to me, come home to Boston, and be the Anita Hemmings that everyone here loves.

Your Bessie

Anita ripped the letter into pieces so small that she couldn’t rip them anymore, then dropped them into the stream, followed by a shower of pebbles, tossed in one by one. How, Anita thought, had Bessie dared write her such a letter! If the wrong hands had opened it, her secret would have been exposed, and just before graduation. Who was to say that the maid hadn’t opened it and sealed it again? Anita wasn’t sure how literate she was, but even someone with a primary school education would recognize the word
Negro
. Bessie was well intentioned, but she had never lived in the world Anita had. Northfield was different. There were students from thirty different countries there. There were Chinese students and Native students and Negro students. And at Wellesley, Bessie had not formed the kinds of friendships Anita had at Vassar. She didn’t know how white people treated you when they thought you one of them. She did not know what it was like for a man like Porter Hamilton to love you.

Anita left the farm flooded with anxiety. She walked down the hill, the art gallery, with its undulating roof, coming into view. At Northfield, Bessie had sympathized with her; now she was chastising her. What would Anita have if she went home? Could she be the person Bessie believed she was? Is that even what she wanted?

No, she thought. Not yet. She still hoped to travel, to study, to soar beyond what she had been so often told were her limits.

As she passed the gallery and headed into the rear of Main, she thought of the rift that might open between her and Bessie after her graduation. She thought about the possibility of a life without her. Bessie had made it clear in her letter: if Anita chose to live permanently as a white woman, they would no longer see each other. Anita chewed on her lip, biting back tears at the prospect. It wasn’t fair of Bessie, she thought. She didn’t turn a blind eye to her now, while she was living as a white woman at Vassar. Why should she after graduation?

Anita brushed the dirt from her dress and hurried inside Main in time for her Greek class with Miss Macurdy.

At thirty-one, Grace Macurdy was one of the youngest professors at Vassar, having graduated from Radcliffe in ’88 and joining Vassar when Anita came in ’93. This semester, Anita’s last, she had shared with her students one of her deepest passions, the history of Hellenistic queens in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt.

After forty minutes of translation work, so difficult that one of the students had tears of frustration smearing her pen marks, Miss Macurdy switched to the lecture format she most enjoyed. Anita listened, fascinated, as the professor spoke about Berenice I of Egypt and her lack of royal blood. Miss Macurdy looked directly at Anita, who had previously confided in her teacher how much she enjoyed the subject, and said, “Berenice’s end was like her beginning. She knew how to live dangerously and how to die bravely, and she had a pitiful heart.”

“I could listen to those stories all afternoon,” Hortense Lewis, Belle’s studious roommate, said to Anita as they stood up to leave together. Hortense and Anita had never been great friends, as Hortense was the kind of person who could only be great friends with a book, but they shared
a passion for Greek history, which gave them fodder for conversation after class. Anita was poised to respond when Miss Macurdy approached her.

“Miss Hemmings, please stay a minute. I’d like to discuss something with you, briefly before the dinner bell.”

Anita nodded, said goodbye to Hortense, and tried to shake off the dread filling her body faster than a well in a rainstorm. She had not been asked to stay after class since Miss Franklin had kept her to share her complicated views on the Negro race. Miss Macurdy placed a pile of papers in front of Anita and pulled out the chair next to her. She gathered her skirts and sat next to her devoted student, her face unsmiling.

“Applications for graduate scholarships awarded by Vassar are on the top. The paperwork for the Babbott Fellowship and for the fellowship for four hundred dollars given by the class of ’87 are underneath. Anita, we will get you to Greece so you can continue your studies, I am sure of it.”

Anita looked at her professor and wanted to cry out with delight. Miss Macurdy, Anita knew, refused to see a passion for the classics wasted. She had told Anita her freshman year that she hailed from Vermont, a state she described as feeling farther from the riches of Greece than the sun. “I myself will be in Europe this summer,” she added now, “at the University of Berlin. Perhaps we will have a chance to meet.”

“I would love that,” said Anita, flipping through the application. “I’m so appreciative that you thought of me. That you recommended me.” Her eyes fell to the Babbott Fellowship paperwork and the space where an applicant was required to fill in her race. French and English, Anita thought to herself. And nothing more.

She thanked Miss Macurdy profusely and headed up to her room to spend the hour before dinner.

Before she reached the top of the staircase, she collected the mail, three letters, all for Lottie. Two of the stamps indicated that the letters had been sent from New York. The other was from Cambridge. Anita looked at the handwriting and recognized it as Porter’s. Desperate to open the letter before Lottie did, she looked around the hall, trying to work up a nerve that did not come naturally to her. But before she could persuade herself to tamper with it, to read it, Caroline stepped out of the elevator.

“Anita, I was hoping you’d be about,” she said. “Let’s go and sit and do absolutely nothing in your parlor before the dinner bell rings. I’ve had such a day. I’m coming from a Phil meeting, and I swear to you that Vassie James is more demanding than the head of the Metropolitan Opera. I have nearly one hundred lines to learn. And you should see the program design for the next play. It’s in the shape of a small black coffin, isn’t that ghastly? My character is not moribund, she’s quite in the prime of her life.”

“But isn’t the play about death?” asked Anita. Lottie had been reciting her lines for the play all week.

“It is, but why must we be so literal? The last program was in the charming shape of a teakettle, and the play was not about tea.”

The girls walked into Anita’s parlor room and found Belle and Lottie already there, Belle strumming her mandolin idly as Lottie rested, a book on her face.

“Your Shakespeare is upside down,” said Anita, picking up the book to reveal Lottie’s closed eyes. “And I fetched the mail. All for you.” She handed Lottie the letters, and Lottie immediately put Porter’s down and out of sight. Sitting up, she opened the first one from New York with her ornate silver letter opener, which boasted a large
T
at the top with a pearl-encrusted loop.

“Can I try my hand at that?” asked Anita, reaching for Belle’s mandolin. As she took the neck of the instrument in her hand, Lottie let out a gasp like a punctured bicycle tire. They all dropped what they were doing and gathered around her.

“Why, we’ve been invited to Clavedon Hall!” said Lottie, as she continued to read.

“The four of us?” asked Caroline. “How delightful. What is Clavedon Hall?”

“Moreover, where is Clavedon Hall?” asked Belle.

“It’s the Rhinelander estate in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire Mountains,” said Lottie, still looking down at the letter embossed with the family’s intricate monogram. “Marchmont Rhinelander has invited us all to visit. He says we could come during our spring vacation in just two weeks’ time!”

She looked up, seemingly as surprised as everybody else. “He writes here that he appreciated our kindness at the opera and would like to see us all again. He’s encouraged us to come for at least a weekend, but preferably a week.”

“Did he write that? All of us?” said Anita.

“He did,” said Lottie, pointing at the line. “There will also be a musician, no, a composer, from France as a guest, and he says that Belle will have many opportunities to showcase her voice.” She looked up at Anita and added, “You, too. I’m afraid we forgot to mention how well you sing. Won’t that be a surprise?”

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” asked Anita, thinking about what Marchmont had said to her. She had managed to deter him once, but could she block his scrutiny for a whole weekend? She didn’t want him to have time to study her face. And what if Frederick were to find out? He would
cross Massachusetts to drag her home by her hair and lock her away in Roxbury forever.

“I don’t know,” said Lottie. “I’m not sure we can go. The Rhinelander family is one of the most highly regarded in New York, but Marchmont is very much its black sheep—”

“But we must!” said Belle excitedly. “I’m already half in love with him, and a week at Clarendon Hall—”

“Clavedon Hall,” Lottie corrected her.

“A week there will certainly make the other half surrender, too. Please respond yes, Lottie. My parents expect me home, as does your mother, but we don’t need to be there for more than a few days, and spring vacation is nearly two weeks long.”

“I planned to remain at college,” said Anita, “and Caroline, too.”

“Even if my mother does approve, we’ll never be allowed to make the trip without a chaperone,” said Lottie from her sofa. “It’s just not done. And my mother as companion is out of the question.”

“What about Nettie Aldrich?” asked Belle, sitting down with her and taking the letter from her hands. It was written on the thickest paper either had ever seen. “Nettie is married and close by in Boston.”

“Of course!” said Lottie. “And Harvard has its spring vacation in April, as well. Perhaps Talbot can accompany her. That would appease my mother.”

“It has to happen!” said Belle, turning pink. “You will come, won’t you, Anita? Caroline?”

“If Lottie’s mother approves, and our families consent, then yes, we will,” said Caroline, answering for both of them. Anita knew she would have to lie to her parents and say she was staying at college for the entire spring holiday. But she couldn’t worry about that now. She was too busy
wondering how she could alter her appearance in two weeks’ time so that Marchmont did not bring up the subject of Boston again.

Mrs. Taylor more than approved. Marchmont may have been the pariah of New York that spring, but he was still a Rhinelander, and when the scandal had blown over, he would again become one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, even at forty-one. Lucretia Schotenhorn had already approved him for her young daughter, and that meant everything in New York.

W
hen the four girls disembarked from their train at Pittsfield on the first Friday in April, the Rhinelander coach was waiting for them. And when they were helped down from it in Lenox, where the Rhinelanders’ stone mansion sat on 128 acres, the first person they saw was Nettie Aldrich. She ran toward the large carriage, the sleeves of her light blue dress billowing. Lenox was full of white-blossoming trees, but between them lay open fields, cleared by farmers, which let the wind through.

“Nettie!” Lottie cried as the girls spotted her.

“Aren’t you all a delight to ask me here?” said Nettie. She was wearing her hair in an even more voluminous style than the last time they had seen her, and they all admired the way it puffed out under her straw sporting hat. “The weather is too beautiful to be in the city,” Nettie said, patting her coiffure lovingly. “And to kick off the spring season at the Rhinelander estate, it’s just marvelous. We’ve already been here three days.”

She turned to Lottie and said, “I was shocked when I received your note. How ever did you acquire an invitation to Clavedon Hall? It’s the grandest house in the Berkshires.”

“We were polite to Marchmont,” Anita explained before Lottie could. “
When no one else was.”

“When no one else was!” echoed Nettie, laughing. “Of course no one else was, Anita. He called off his engagement two days before his wedding to Estelle Schotenhorn! Seven hundred oysters had to be thrown out, three hundred live quails had to be returned—can you imagine the embarrassment?”

“Oh, no, not the live quails,” Caroline whispered to Anita, making them both laugh.

“Enough, you two,” said Lottie. “Hailing from the middle of nowhere, both of you. You just don’t know the power of the Schotenhorns in New York. They run society, and society runs the city. I’m surprised they still allow Marchmont to live there. He really should be banished to this Berkshire cottage.”