The Gilded Years (3 page)

“Oh, look, our rocking chair from Uncle Fred,” Lottie said, running her hand over the curved chair that was paid for and placed in every dormitory room by the prominent trustee. “I used to sit in mine all the time last year when I’d had too much to drink. I’d just collapse like a rag doll and sleep it off.”

“Do you drink often?” her roommate asked, hoping she didn’t sound prudish.

“Anita, dearest. One has to live a little, don’t you think?” Lottie looked up with her pale, heart-shaped face, which clearly favored mischief over morals.

“Of course,” Anita replied hastily, though on campus she was noted for her reserve.

“With your beauty, you are destined to live a dramatic life,” said Lottie, putting her hand on Anita’s chin and studying her face. “Living,
really
living, is awfully entertaining. We’ll do a lot of it this year, I promise you.” She peered around the room at the wall hangings she had put up before Anita’s arrival. In between the draped blue silk was an exquisite kimono, hand-painted with a mountain scene and cascading pink cherry blossoms on the back.

“Let’s tack this cloth to the wall by that kimono,” Lottie said, reaching for a few yards of fabric and picking up a scroll painting of evergreen rice paper with her other hand. “The maids go on about cluttering up the room like this, because dust gathers or some nonsense, and they’re worried we’ll burn the whole place down when it falls into the oil lamps, but I don’t care. I am not living in bland quarters. My mind won’t expand. And for me to keep up here, my mind needs a lot of expanding.”

“I like what you’ve done with it so far. It’s much more
striking than my parlor room last year,” her roommate said. Their room looked like a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot advertisement for luxury travel to the Orient.

Lottie let the fabric drop and admired her work.

“Well, as I said, I am besotted with Japan at the moment. I traveled to Tokyo and Kyoto in July and August with father, and it was majestic. I can’t even begin to describe the people. So slight, so diminutive and elegant. They walk on wooden shoes, can you imagine? And they wear long silk kimonos and the food is beautifully presented. Plus the fish! You haven’t eaten a fish until you’ve eaten a raw Japanese fish. I know it sounds dreadful, but it’s just the opposite. And then of course there is the actual art. The paintings and calligraphy, the woodblock prints. My father bought an original Hokusai, whose work is causing a sensation in Paris. His name will make it to America soon. We’re behind, of course. Isn’t that always the case? I tried to bring the print here, but you can guess how that conversation terminated. I’m going to sail to Japan again after graduation. Father promised me I could, as long as I’m chaperoned. I want to go all over the Orient. You should accompany me. We’d have a magnificent time.”

Anita knew that within days of graduation, she would have a sensible teaching job or a scholarship to another school. And not one across the Pacific Ocean.

“It sounds splendid,” Anita said noncommittally, diverting the conversation from any future plans.

“I am so taken with Orientals,” said Lottie. “They have the most marvelous features.” She picked up the hammer and headed to the wall above the ornate lacquer tea table, delivered from overseas just that morning.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, after she had already put the first hole in the plaster.

“Not at all,” Anita answered honestly.

“I told father that I was going to marry the future emperor of Japan, Crown Prince Yoshihito,” she said with her back turned and a nail between her teeth again. “And he said he would shoot me first. He meant it, too. He has several guns and a terrible temper.” She spat out the nail so she could be better heard. “It’s not like I said I was going to run off with a despondent railroad worker with an opium pipe. A sensitive man, my father, but a real modern person despite it all. I forgave him because he’s originally from Pittsburgh, and people from Pittsburgh are natural brutes. It’s a good thing my mother was born in New York or I would be an absolute lost cause and never get invited anywhere of note. Mrs. Astor has a real disdain for people from Pittsburgh.”

She looked around the room again and jumped onto the small green velvet couch.

“Come, Anita, let’s tack this all up to the walls and make this room look like a palace.” She grabbed her roommate by the hand and handed her a small nail and the hammer she had been using. “You try this. I’ll wield my Latin dictionary. It will have the most use it’s had in years. Just be mindful of the noise because if Mervis hears us, we’re sure to get fined.”

“Fined?” Anita asked, crossing to the opposite wall.

“It’s worth it, don’t you think? I was fined at the start of every semester last year, but we can’t be expected to live in some desolate chamber. How will we learn anything? You should have seen my parlor as a freshman. That was the year I was absolutely taken with the French Revolution. This year’s décor will be decidedly cheaper, as the Japanese really do have a simpler aesthetic. Plus, if my father doesn’t receive fines from the college, he will think I’m in ill health
and have lost my spirit. This,” she said, motioning to the room, “is in everybody’s best interest.”

The roommates finished tacking up the silk just as Mervis came in with their trunks, grunting about the walls. Lottie smiled sweetly and told him to make out the bill to Mr. Clarence Taylor, then she sent for a maid who helped the pair put away their dresses.

“I’m starving,” Lottie declared after she had placed her silver hairbrush on the table by her bed and her silver inkstand on the writing table. Anita had done the same in her room with her modest belongings.

“How about we walk over for an ice cream at the Dutchess? Is there still time to get a leave of absence to go to town?” Lottie asked.

“I believe the Dutchess is closed now. It’s nearly six o’clock,” Anita replied, looking at the gold clock by Lottie’s bed. “The dinner bell will ring soon.”

“Not those awful bells,” said Lottie, sticking her tongue out like a gargoyle. “Isn’t it horrible that we have to run around listening to the cling clang of old bells? The rising hour bell, the dinner bell, the chapel bell—I feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

Anita laughed and said, “You don’t look it.”

“Really?” Lottie said, puffing up her cheeks. “I feel quite like a French hunchback today. I hate the sleeves on this dress,” she added, trying to pull them up at the shoulder. “I told my seamstress in Paris to make them bigger, but she’s so conservative and her answer to everything is ‘
Non, ma chérie
.’ Not shockingly, she makes my mother’s day clothes, and I tend to hate my mother’s day clothes. For eveningwear I much prefer the House of Worth, but mother said I wasn’t allowed to train up in my Lyon silk. Anyway, you should go on. I know you were voted class beauty as a freshman. Don’t
try to deny it. And I heard all about you and your big, beautiful brown eyes from a few of my Harvard acquaintances, too.”

Anita’s surprised look caused Lottie to elaborate. “I said
acquaintances,
Anita. Don’t tell me you believe all of that gossip. One little dalliance during the Harvard-Yale game as a sophomore and I’m a scorned woman. Vassar girls sure can talk. I don’t have a flaxen-haired daughter hidden in a convent in Switzerland, if you happen to be wondering.”

“I hadn’t heard that one,” Anita replied, thoroughly entertained.

“Well, I don’t. What I do have is a younger brother in his junior year at Harvard, and he told me that you were quite the talk of the school after our Founder’s Day dance last spring. Many Harvard men in attendance, if you remember. Yes, I launched an inquisition on you, Miss Hemmings.”

It was unfortunate that Anita hadn’t done the same.

As Anita contemplated what rooming with Lottie Taylor would mean for her final year at Vassar, she heard a light knock on their parlor door.

“Come in!” bellowed Lottie in her low, raspy voice. Anita speculated that Lottie’s voice was half the reason so many rumors circulated about her. There was something quite intoxicating about it.

The door opened slowly, and a tall girl bounded in, earning smiles from both roommates. Belle Tiffany, an alto in the choir and the Glee Club, was one of Anita’s closest friends.

“Belle Tiffany! Look at you,” said Lottie. “See, I’m rooming with your old friend Anita Hemmings. The beautiful girls with the soaring voices. What will I do with myself around both of you? I need to develop a skill. I’m a terrible disappointment.”

“You’re exceedingly rich,”
said Belle, looking at the decorated walls. “And I suppose you’re amusing, too.”

“That’s true. I am awfully funny,” said Lottie, hopping onto the couch again. “Matthew Ellery, Lucy Ellery’s brother up at Harvard, he was my Phil date last year, and he said I was the most entertaining girl he had ever known. Then he said men aren’t supposed to be fond of girls who favor humor over femininity. But then when I laughed and said I found the whole thing quite amusing, the beast leaned over and kissed me. And I mean kissed. Not just with his mouth, with his entire body, especially the middle. If we hadn’t been clothed, who knows what would have happened?”

“Lottie, stop trying to shock. We’re seniors now. We’re immune to your alarming ways,” said Belle.

“Speak for yourself. I’m sure I’ll make Anita Hemmings faint before the semester is over. Besides, do you want me to graduate without so much as kissing a few Harvard seniors?”

“Most say you’ve done quite a bit more than that,” teased Belle.

“Belle, don’t start rumors. Even if they are true,” said Lottie, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror propped on her dressing table. “And Anita, try not to look as if you’re going to wilt. I’ll burn your books if I have to—it’s our last year here, and I won’t spend it stuck in Uncle Fred’s Nose reading
Beowulf
.”

“You read
Beowulf
as a freshman. You aren’t required to read it again,” said Belle. “And have as much fun as you want, Lottie, just remember that you should graduate like the rest of us or your father will write you out of his will.” Belle winked at Anita. “Lottie’s father is a major financial supporter of women’s education. He was asked to be a trustee, but he said not until his daughter had graduated. Did you hear that, Lottie? Critical detail,
graduated
.”

“Belle, hold your judgment until we’ve reached the finish line. I’ll graduate. Maybe not with the highest honors, but I will. You’ll both just have to help me.”

When the roommates came back from dinner that evening—where they were happily assigned to a senior table with Caroline, Belle, and Belle’s roommate, Hortense Lewis—Lottie boiled water for tea with lemon and Anita lit a lamp between them.

“I do miss electric lamps,” Lottie said, watching Anita fiddle with the gas. “I was getting rather used to them and look at us now, back like moths to a flame.”

“Do you have electricity at home?” Anita asked, trying to make the gas stream stronger. Her own house in Boston only had gas lamps, and a very limited number at that.

“Oh, yes, my father had every lamp installed with electric wiring, though some chandeliers are constructed for both gas and electricity. It’s glorious. You just use a switch, on and off. One day we’ll have them here, but not for years and years. We’ll be long gone by then, living our extraordinary ordinary lives.”

“Caroline Hardin told me you were rather exceptional,” Anita said, sipping her tea. She stood up to open their large parlor window, as the heat of the day had burned off and the air from the river had turned in their direction.

“Caroline Hardin did? My favorite Syrian redhead?”

“The very one.”

“And what do you think of that?” said Lottie.

“I think Caroline Hardin is usually right,” she said diplomatically. Lottie twinkled a smile, the dimples on her face looking more pronounced in the lamplight.

The two prepared for bed under walls draped in silks and kimonos and pictures of Kyoto. Somewhere, tucked in among the Japonisme, was Anita’s small photograph of a
statue of the Greek goddess Artemis, taken in the Louvre and given to her by one of the Harvard seniors Lottie mentioned. It seemed somehow fitting that her contribution to their rooms was so small. The Lottie Taylors of the world were always the ones to have an enormous impact.

O
n their second afternoon on campus, Anita’s roommate found her on the path to Main after her physics class in the Vassar Brothers Laboratory. Lottie slid next to her and took her by the arm.

“You are coming to the first meeting of the Federal Debating Society, aren’t you?” Lottie said. “I know you were a member last year, and I’ve decided to join up this semester. Be more academic and all that.”

“I was planning on it, after choir practice,” Anita replied. “We have the vocal and violin recital on the twenty-fifth and we’re singing at the Christian Association Reception on the first of October.”

“That is ever so much trilling. We should have you give private concerts in our room with that voice of yours. You and Belle, though you take the lead, since you’re the coveted first soprano. We could fleece the freshmen and then spend all our earnings in New York. You will come down to New York with me, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” said Anita, trying not to sound too thrilled. If Vassar was her most cherished place, then New York City, which she had visited twice, was what she dreamed about.

“Good! It’s all settled. First we’ll go to the debating society meeting, then we’ll put in with Kendrick for a weekend when we can go down. You’ll love my family. I don’t most of the time, but most others seem to.”

“Lottie!” Anita said, stopping midstep.

“I know, I’m shockingly honest,” she replied with an impish smile. “Such an unfeminine trait. But being feminine is a great annoyance most of the time. What is your family like? Are they as outrageous as mine?”

“I doubt it,” said Anita, growing uneasy at the mention of her relatives. “They’re rather serious. Very intellectual. Yours sound more entertaining.”