Gilded Summers

Gilded Summers-3

“No, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be.”

“Clarence is so busy, after all, Orin.” Mother carried on as if I hadn't said a word. It wasn't the first time. “He has his tennis and his sailing, and so many other activities. Isn't that why we bought a membership to the Casino?”

The Casino had been an establishment in Newport for ten years before we arrived. I had heard a little of the silly tale that brought about its creation. James Gordon Bennett, the man who owned the New York Herald and another newspaper in Paris I think, was the man who built it and made its rules. Before the Casino, and even now, most of the Newport men went to the Reading Room, a `gentlemen's club,' they called it. I'd heard it was a very serious, a very stodgy place. I had walked past it, of course, for it was just down Bellevue Avenue, not far from our home. Past it, never to enter.

The rumor, as it went, claims Mr. Bennett invited one of his friends to the Reading Room. That friend, an Englishman by the name of Captain Candy, a name which sounded quite fake to me, Mr. Bennett had challenged to do something outlandish at the Reading Room, wake things up a bit. Captain Candy complied. He jumped on his horse, rode it up the stairs, and into the hall.

Imagine the outcry, the madness; I imagined the hilarity. The Board of the Reading Room censured Mr. Bennett and retracted Captain Candy's guest privileges. Mr. Bennett's response…the construction of the Newport Casino.

This club was far from stodgy. With much more modern architecture, it took up the entire end block on Bellevue Avenue on the northeast corner of Memorial Boulevard. There were tennis courts and polo courts and lovely porches where, wonder of wonders, women were welcomed to sit and socialize and watch. There were balls and banquets and musicales held there as well; I loved those most of all. Membership was exclusive but no match for my mother's determination or my father's credentials.

“I have no wish to deny Clarence all those past-times, Millicent, but a well-rounded man possesses other talents than the ability to hit a ball well over a net or excel at other sorts of sports.” My father gave my brother a look; there was something in it I didn't understand at the time. Clarence blushed. “He should know of music and literature and art. Such things are what make a man a gentleman.”

It was quite a lengthy speech for my father, an impassioned one at that, though, in that moment, I could find no joy in it.

“Well then,” Mother said between spoonfuls, “as long as he has time for his other pursuits, ones that will bring him into the good graces of our neighbors, I suppose it wouldn't be terrible.” She reached across the table to take my brother's hand, quite the stretch at this table. “Perhaps you will be able to serenade our guests sometime soon. That would make quite the impression. Wouldn't it, Orin?”

My mother brokered a deal with the high craftiness of any of the wealthy industrialists who populated our small summer community. My father knew it as surely as I did. He made the deal; he, too, was a master businessman. Clarence was quick to agree but I caught the look that passed between him and my mother; only they knew the code to decipher their message. Yet I knew my brother would still spend more time at the Casino than at any other place. I believe my father saw it as well, as I saw the ends of his bushy mustache hang lower.

I knew then there would be no violin lessons for me. It didn't matter. I knew what I truly wanted. I stopped listening, stopped eating, and remembered.

* * *

I remembered that day as if it was yesterday, not four years ago.

We were in the home of Henry Havemeyer. Miss Mary Cassatt's dearest friend was married to one of his cousins and the occasion was a homecoming of sorts for the woman painter. It was a showing as well, for her astounding works stood on easels propped up around the circumference of the room. I must have walked round at least five times.

My father, so much taller then as I stood by his side, spoke to her. He preferred the work of the grand masters of the Renaissance, but I could tell he was curious about this woman.

“Your style, Miss Cassatt, it is very unique,” he'd said to her upon proper introduction.

The round-faced woman's thin lips almost broke into a smile, almost. My lips tried to form the same knowing, slight curve.

“Not so, sir,” she said. “Perhaps here in America, yes. Nevertheless, it has been flourishing in France for some time. It is called Impressionism.”

My father tilted his head at the unfamiliar term.

“When I traveled to Paris in 1875,” Miss Cassatt continued, “the technique was burgeoning. Especially by Degas. I used to go and flatten my nose against an art dealer's window, a window full of Degas' work, and absorb all I could of his technique.”

She looked up at my father; simple features no longer simple as they bloomed. “It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it.”

“And your family, Miss Cassatt,” my mother had chimed in with what she thought was an important question. “Do they encourage your…work?”

Miss Cassatt's face returned to its stoic self. It broke only for a moment, when her gaze turned down to me; I saw her smile for the first time that day. The smile faded like the moon with the coming of dawn as she returned her attention to my mother.

“I will tell you this, Madam. I enrolled myself in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the age of fifteen.” She said no more, but her eyes held my mother's with a fierce grip.

Mother laughed her tinny, fake laugh. “How courageous of you,” she said flatly. “Well, we will let you greet the other guests.”

My mother had yanked my father away then, me with them, and brought her mouth close to his ear, but not so close I didn't hear her disparaging condemnation, “A new woman.”

I didn't know then what she meant, but I learned. I didn't know what a tangled path would lay before me for it, but I, too, wanted to be a new woman. Most of all, I wanted to be an artist. I thought I had the talent, as Miss Cassatt did, but did I have her courage?

GINEVRA

The man called Birch led us through the marble hall. I walked on tiptoes. I walked as I once had through a grand cathedral back in Italy.

He hurried us along. I had only seconds to glimpse a dining room, one so large it could have served as a great hall in a castle from long ago. It glittered; gold sparkled everywhere. Across from it, an alcove, each end flanked by glass and gold cabinets. On display were more treasures of silver and gold, china and porcelain. I slowed; if I could, I would have run.

The man hurried us along.

We passed through two dark, carved doors; we passed into another world. Inside these doors, we entered a small landing.

“This is a ladies' powder room,” Mr. Birch finally decided to speak to us. “The Beeches has some of the most modern plumbing in all of Newport.” He turned hard eyes on me. “Family and guests only.”

I returned his look. Nothing more.

The snobby man spoke with such pride; you would think this enormous place belonged to him. I suppose in a way he thought it did.

Everything about Birch was stiff, his perfectly pressed cut-away, pristine white shirt, large black puff tie with its big, fancy knot bobbing as he spoke, but especially the stiff tone of his voice. Did he speak to everyone with such cold flatness or did such a chill frost only my father and me? Time would tell.

My father nudged my arm and gave me `the look.' I translated.

Such looks came constantly during our journey to America. I saw more of them than I did the passing ocean.

Mr. Worthington had paid our fare, thirty dollars each… thirty dollars to travel in the bowels of one of the great steamships crossing the ocean faster than the wind. It was a week living in hell.

Not allowed on deck, I had begun to dream of fresh air before the journey ended. They fed us little else but soup or stew, we slept in huddled masses on the floor in our clothes beside our luggage and had only salt water to wash ourselves.

Few of the others understood the sharply delivered instructions of the ship's crew given only in English. I was one of the few.

My role as translator had started then, and though I tried to teach Papa the language through the long empty hours on the ship, he had learned to say only a few words; he understood even less. Instead, he would give me `the look' and I would translate as best I could.

The ship docked in New York. We rose up from our burial place and saw the sky, breathing deep. The sight of the giant lady and her torch overwhelmed us. We had heard of her, her welcoming. The people who worked at her feet were not so kind. I feared, despised, and pitied them. Their jobs were difficult; they could not show us too much kindness. To them, we were no different from the colored, what Italians called mulignane. The nastiness of it became my reality. They stripped away our humanity; we could have been heads of lettuce. Yet they were just doing their work.

They tagged us like cattle, put us in rooms to stand, waiting. We stood in lines for hours, herded through, telling our names over and over.

So many lost their real names. If they couldn't write, those who registered us went by sound alone, mangling many, wrong names these newcomers would carry for the rest of their lives. Worse were the ones they sent back. They had endured for nothing.

Then the inspections…our clothes, our hair, our mouths, our bodies. Endless invasions making us feel less than human. The constant questions, the same again and again. Thorough and hurried at the same time. They hurried us so fast, often I didn't have time to understand myself. They hurried us, as the butler did now, as if they couldn't wait to get us to a place where they could not see us.

Birch pointed to his left.

“This pantry here serves both the breakfast room just behind it and the dining room. A marvelous convenience for the family.”

He said mahvelous as if he were one of them.

He opened another door, plain wood and frosted glass. Into another foyer, a simple if bright one of windows and white tile. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all of small white squares of tile. Then to the staircase.

It rose and fell away from us. I looked up and down; I could see the white grillwork and polished wood banister spiral away in perfect symmetry. I stood in the middle, moving neither up nor down. It was a landing named nowhere.

“This is the servants' staircase. It is the only staircase you shall ever use.”

Birch stopped and turned to us. “Ever.”

My father needed no translation to understand.

“They may use it from time to time.” He said “they” as if the word referred to a king or a queen. “But rarely. Downstairs, if you please,” he instructed.

I had known we traveled to a rich man's house, but I never imagined a place like this. I became aware of our ragged appearance, clothes old and worn before the hard journey, now so very much worse, our ragged suitcases holding only more ragged clothes. The coarse wool scratched me for the first time in my life. My foot shrunk away from the top step; I could not see where they led.