The Gilded Years (39 page)

When she and Bessie finished reading, Anita glimpsed a newspaper she hadn’t been shown resting in the large book Bessie had been pretending to read. She had left it open accidentally to come over and console Anita. The paper was another issue of the
Boston Post,
and Anita could see it contained still another article about her, this one accompanied by a sketch of her parents’ home as well as another one of her face.
MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE COLLEGE AND CHUM OF ARISTOCRATIC GIRLS
, the headline read, followed by a subheading:
THE DAUGHTERS OF WEALTH ARE SHOCKED
. Anita could imagine Lottie writing that herself.

She stood up and reached for the paper.

“Oh, Anita, no!” cried Bessie. “Do not read that nonsense, please! It was obtuse of me to have left it out.”

Anita ignored her. She read the headline again, then the first column, and started laughing until she bent double.

“What is it?” said Bessie, smiling. She hadn’t heard her friend laugh since the day she ran to her on the beach in Cottage City.

“ ‘Young men students had paid court to her. The flower of Harvard’s young manhood had eagerly asked for an introduction to the beautiful Vassar girl, and after the introduction had become her willing slaves, enchanted by her beauty, her refined manner, her air of aristocratic distinction, and the soft tones of her voice,’ ” Anita read aloud. “ ‘Not only among Harvard men was she a society idol, but Columbia men, Princeton men, and the democratic sons of Yale all alike fell under the spell of her charm.’ ”

Anita’s laughter rang out again, and she dropped the paper onto the table. “Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous, Bessie? They make me out to be Helen of Troy! The only man who was ever enamored with me was Porter Hamilton, and now I have my doubts that he ever really was.”

“I firmly believe that many men were desperately in love with you,” said Bessie, thrilled at this flash of her friend’s old lightheartedness. “As I told those reporters, to know you is to bow to your pleasing ways. Perhaps all these sons of Yale wrote to the paper en masse to declare their love for you just yesterday.”

“Despite my race,” said Anita, serious again.

“Despite your race,” Bessie echoed.

In the days that followed, the Boston papers reported that the story about Anita was also appearing in dozens of publications across the country, from the
New York Times
to a newspaper in Hawaii. All of America was seeing her likeness and reading how she deceived the nation’s top women’s college and its elite community.

Once Anita realized the reach of her story, she fell into her depression again, wanting only to shut herself indoors, but Bessie wouldn’t allow it. She saw her off to the streetcar on her first day of work at the library and didn’t turn around when Anita called her name from the road.

Though it took several weeks, the library helped keep Anita afloat. Negro and white employees alike were kind to her, keeping reporters at bay and treating her as if she were not the eye of a page-one scandal, but simply another intelligent college graduate who had joined them in their important work.

When Anita came home one evening after two weeks at the library, surprised to have made it to that milestone, Bessie greeted her and dropped several letters in front of her, only smiling when Anita looked at her in alarm. “I am hoping for the best from these, Anita. I don’t think people would write if they had hatred toward you. They would just ignore you,” said Bessie. She explained that she had been in Boston that day, as well, visiting Anita’s family to find out whether the flood of reporters coming to Sussex Street had started to thin. She assured Anita that it had, and left her alone to open her mail.

The first two letters were from Belle and Caroline, both declaring their unfailing support. Anita held them to her chest for a moment before she opened two others, one from Miss Macurdy and the other from Medora Higgins, the former president of the Federal Debating Society. To Anita’s surprise and pleasure, they both expressed similar sentiments.

But the last letter she opened came as a much bigger surprise.

Dear Miss Hemmings,

As you know, I guessed your true race the evening we were formally introduced at the opera, as I was certain I
had seen you in Roxbury as the New Year approached. You also have similar coloring, similar striking features, to my sister Carrie. I do consider her my sister, if you wondered when we spoke, and not just someone I care for financially.

Miss Hemmings, I want you to know that you will always be welcome at Clavedon Hall, and rest assured that Miss Taylor will not be.

Do stay in touch and call on me when you are in New York. I would very much like to see you again, especially now that we can speak candidly. That will be delightful for us both, I’m sure of it.

Yours faithfully,

Marchmont Rhinelander

I
t was two months later, when she was concentrating on acting with the utmost decorum in order to keep her new job, that Anita made an unexpected acquaintance. Busy with her cataloguing one morning, she looked up as a fashionably dressed man with a long, confident gait approached her, carrying a large book.

“Are you Miss Hemmings?” he asked, gripping his hat firmly with his other hand.

“I am,” said Anita, happy to speak to someone who did not already recognize her from the newspapers. In the months since she had been employed at the library, there had been many who, in recognizing her, gave their unsolicited opinions on what she had done, and through those interactions, Anita had grown even more reserved and hesitant in her demeanor.

“My name is Dr. Andrew Love,” said the man, his voice deep but amiable. “I was told you might be able to help me with this physiology book. It’s been mental gymnastics for me for the past few hours, as I’m afraid my Greek is not what it used to be before I took up my medical studies. It has been quite a few years since I did undergraduate work and read more than a line or two in Greek.”

Anita took the book from him, sat down as it was quite heavy, and flipped through the pages. The medical terminology was daunting, but she gestured to him to join her at the table by one of the library’s large windows.

Anita helped him for just shy of an hour—she translating the small print aloud, he taking dictation—before he paused and laid down his pen. Feeling his eyes on her, she continued reading, not sure what else to do.

“Miss Hemmings,” he said, interrupting her. “Please pardon my ill manners but I must confess something to you,” he said as she lifted her eyes from the book. “I came here to the library with the intention of meeting you. I have been reading about you in the newspapers, and I told myself that I must make the acquaintance of this brave, intelligent woman.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anita, standing up quickly. “But I do not wish to speak about the stories in the newspapers, and it would be most inappropriate to do so at my place of employment. I’ll have to ask you to leave my section at once. I’m sure you can find someone else to help you with your translation.” Anita knew it wasn’t correct to speak to a patron this way, but she could not bear one more conversation about her passing at Vassar, even if the man in question was congratulatory of her actions.

She turned to leave, but Andrew Love moved with her, closer than a shadow.

“I apologize for upsetting you,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t have spoken so forthrightly, or even come here seeking you out. But you see, I wanted to meet you, and I thought it might be helpful for you to meet me, because I—” He took a step back as Anita moved as if to sprint away from him.

“I have a great amount of respect you for, Miss Hemmings,”
he said changing his approach. “For what you did to receive the best education you could. And furthermore, what I should have disclosed initially is, I am the same as you, Miss Hemmings. I am a Negro, like you,” he said in a whisper. “And I thought to myself, this bold young woman might not have met anyone like herself before. A well-educated Negro who knows what it is to live as colored and as white.” He looked down while fiddling with the brim of his hat, suddenly seeming as nervous as she was. “You see, I am in Boston readying myself to attend Harvard as a Negro student, but at times I have lived otherwise. I have practiced medicine both as a Negro and as white.”

“You are a Negro?” Anita asked softly, bending her head, too.

“I am,” said Andrew Love, who though clearly several years her senior, still had a youthful roundness to his face. “If you would please sit back down with me, I will be happy to tell you more about myself. If you might find that of interest. But if not, I will leave at once and apologize for my impertinence.”

Anita gestured to the table and sat down with him again, now anxious in a very different way.

Situated at a respectable distance from Anita, and speaking with half the volume he had before, Andrew said, “My full name is Andrew Jackson Love. I was not born in Massachusetts, nor have I been here for very long.” He cleared his throat and dropped his voice even more. “I was born into a family of twelve children, by two different women, my mother and my father’s second wife, in Canton, Mississippi. That’s right in the heart of poverty-stricken Madison County, north of Jackson, east of Yazoo City. Have you ever been to Mississippi, Miss Hemmings?” he asked, taking small glances to his left and right to make sure they were still alone.

“I have not. I have never been further south than New York City.”

“And I had never been north of Tennessee until this year,” he explained. “My father was, and still is, a farm laborer down in Mississippi. But he always said we, his children, should amount to more. Sadly, that wish is difficult to make a reality when you are poor and Negro in Mississippi. He was born in Virginia like your parents, but he went south instead of going north like he should have.”

His mention of her parents reminded Anita how much the newspapers had printed about her private life and she felt a stroke of panic flush through her body. Still, she could not bring herself to stop Andrew from speaking, and she looked at his pale face with more interest than she hoped to show.

“My brothers, many are farm laborers,” he continued, “yet I knew I would do something different, something with medicine, even if it took me a long time to find my way. And as you can see, I was light-skinned enough to pass as white if I chose to. Many of my siblings are not.”

“Mine, either,” Anita explained, though the newspapers had already made that clear. “My nearest brother Frederick is able to, though not as easily as I, and for the two younger ones, it is out of the question.”

Andrew nodded in understanding and said, “Still, like you, I didn’t pass for many years. I was a schoolteacher down in Tennessee and Louisiana at Negro high schools. That was before I scraped together the means, and the confidence, to attend medical school in Tennessee. And I’m glad I did. It changed my life, even if it meant giving up seeing family for years now. That’s probably the most important place to start.”

“Your story sounds much like my family,” said Anita. If
he had not told her, she would never have known he was a Negro.

“I read in the newspaper that Vassar had been your singular goal for many years,” he went on. “It was the same with me, Miss Hemmings. I’ve been aware since childhood that I wanted to pursue medicine. In the community where I spent my early years, there were no doctors for miles, just terrible suffering.”

Anita nodded her head in understanding, though it was hard for her to fully understand the poverty of the rural southern Negro. Black Boston was not the South and her parents had made her aware from early on how lucky she was to be born in Massachusetts.

“ ‘Doctor’ meant a mother, a prayer, never a licensed physician,” Andrew explained. “I watched people die around me, people who could have been so easily saved. So, like you, I focused on one goal: in my case, attending medical school. And I did. I eventually enrolled as a student at the medical department of Central Tennessee College, a medical school for Negroes only.”

“Our doctor in Roxbury,” Anita interrupted, “he too attended a Negro medical college. Perhaps it was the same school.”

“Perhaps,” said Andrew. “But he was intelligent enough to come north, if so. It took me much longer to do the same. After I graduated, I worked as a doctor—a colored doctor for the colored community—in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was rewarding work, but one that also gave me a new goal, to attend a medical school in New England. So I came to Massachusetts with my sights set on Harvard. If Harvard becomes a reality, they will have me on record as a Negro, as you can’t lie about your race if you come from a Negro school. But that may change in the future.”

Anita thought about her luck with Northfield, and how true that statement was. “In what circumstance would that change?” she inquired. “If it is not too rude of me to ask.”

“I don’t know precisely,” Andrew answered honestly. “The world works with you sometimes and against you at others. Passing isn’t a future goal of mine, as I know, from experience, what one has to give up in the process. But sometimes, to obtain what you think you deserve, or to advance your studies or career, the world forces you to live that way. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Hemmings?”

“I do, of course,” she replied quietly, looking around as Andrew had done to see if they were still alone. “But when I passed at Vassar, I did not have to give up my family. You say you haven’t seen yours in many years.”

“That’s right,” he replied, moving his hat around in a circle with his right hand. “But it’s not because of passing. It’s economics. I’m afraid I haven’t had the means, or the time, to travel back to Mississippi, as saving for Harvard has been my priority.”

“Of course, a journey north is very expensive.”

“It is,” said Andrew slowly. “But I see what you are touching on. Many people like us, who do not see their families for an extended period—it’s a by-product of passing.”