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Category: A.C. Gunter: Baron Montez of Panama and Paris

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 15. Winterburn’s Museum

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 15. Winterburn’s Museum

    An unopened powder canister bearing the stamp “Dupont Rifle Powder, 1852″ embedded in a tree branch is just one of the curious mysteries the reader will confront in this chapter. There are also alligators and snakes—lots of snakes; and as well, young girls smoking cigarettes.

    Louise, our courageous heroine, finds her accommodation comfortable in the house of Martinez, the notary. The family warmly welcomes her and she is treated to a tour of Silas Winterburn’s museum of strange artefacts. In the process, the mystery of Mrs. Silas Winterburn’s Christian name is revealed, though another curious mystery concerning her husband’s treasures remains for another day.

    After acquiring his less than salubrious accommodation, Harry’s first act is to purchase a ‘wide-brimmed sombrero de Guayaquil’. While the word ‘sombrero’ may evoke an image of Mexican cowboys and mariachi musicians, it is simply Spanish for ‘hat’. Guayaquil is the largest port and city of Ecuador, and the hat Harry has purchased would have been handwoven by locals from a palm-like plant called Paja Toquilla (or Carludovica Palmata). The sombrero de Guayaquil was popular among workers on the canal. Although made in Ecuador, it is Panama that gives this stylish hat its name, and makes it famous world-wide.

    Types of Notables in the Capital, Province of Santander [Colombia] (1850), watercolor, Carmelo Fernández. Source: National Library of Colombia

    When it comes to his mission, whereas before it was only a suggestion of the narrator, now Harry personally dons the knight’s armour. There is some confusion, however, over which damsel’s colours he bears. He is aware that the only weapons he possesses are his physical presence, good looks and charm; and because of Louise, he feels invested with strong resolve. Previously he has referred to his travel to Panama as a ‘wild goose chase’, and at this point the reader may speculate about what he hopes to achieve.

    First through Louise, and now in this chapter, Harry is seeking a means of getting the dirt on Baron Fernando Montez, but to what end? He will be unlikely to discover that Montez is not a Baron. However, if he does find some incriminating or unsavory information about Montez, it is hard to fathom how discrediting the Baron publicly will serve to regain Miss Severn and Frank Larchmont’s fortunes. Of course, possessed of information that Montez does not want made known would give Harry the opportunity to blackmail him, but is that the action we expect of a knight errant?

    BOOK 4

    THE STRUGGLE IN PANAMA

    CHAPTER 15

    WINTERBURN’S MUSEUM

    Striking a bargain with a mulatto charioteer, half in the English tongue, half in Spanish, Winterburn procures a carriage, and the party take route up the lane leading from the railway station; and passing into the old town of Panama, between houses whose balconies come very close together, they reach the Calle del Cathedral or Main Street.

    A moment after, Miss Minturn gives an exclamation of pleasure, for they have come out on the great plaza of the town, and the sunshine is upon it, making it look very bright and pleasant compared to the dark streets through which they have passed.

    They drive along this, past a little café, with seats and tables on the sidewalk, after the manner of Paris, and then in front of the old Grand Hotel—the one in which Montez had made the acquaintance of the Franco-American. This is now devoted to the offices of the Panama Canal Company—the upper floors being used for business purposes, and the lower one being turned into a general club full of billiard tables for the use of its employees; all lavishly paid for by the money of the stock holders.

    Then they come to another café or restaurant, more elaborate than the first, whose tables and chairs are upon the sidewalk like those of the grand Boulevard cafés in far-off Paris. Turning the corner, across the Plaza with its walks and tropic plants, the girl sees the great Cathedral of Panama, old with the dust of centuries. But this is distant and ancient; and the Grand Central Hotel and a lot of offices are near her and modern.

    At the old Club International, they turn away from the Plaza and go towards the sea wall and the ‘Battery’; and after passing through more narrow streets with over hanging verandas, they come to the house of the notary, Martinez.

    Here Mrs. Winterburn is received in voluble Spanish, by the wife of the official, a Creole lady of about thirty-five, but looking much older, and her numerous progeny; all of them daughters, ranging from twenty-two to fourteen, and all of them, in this rapid sunny part of the world, of marriageable age.

    Louise’s Spanish soon makes them her friends, and she finds herself settled very comfortably in a room that looks out over a wide veranda on a little patio, or enclosed courtyard, around which the house is built. This courtyard has a few plants and flowers, in contradistinction to most of the Panama patios, whose inhabitants are too lazy to put into the earth anything that merely beautifies, though the land only requires planting to blossom like Sharon’s Vale. Her apartment is up one flight of stairs, for there are stores underneath, and the family, as in most of the Spanish portions of Panama, live over them.

    Inspection discloses to Miss Minturn that she has a clean room, with whitewashed walls and matting upon the floor; a white-sheeted bed, and a few other articles of furniture that are comfortable, though not luxurious. At one end of her room swings a hammock.

    “Hammock, or bed! You can take your choice, señorita!” laughs the old Spanish lady. “But if you take my advice, you will choose the hammock—it’s cooler!” and leaves her alone.

    Then Louise looking around, finds there is a veranda overhanging the street, to which a door leads directly from her room. With this open there is a very good draught, which is pleasant, as it is now the sultry portion of the afternoon.

    Soon her trunk, which has been attended to by kindly old Winterburn, arrives, and the girl unpacking it, makes her preparations for permanent stay, and looking out on the prospect, thinks: “How different this is to Seventeenth Street in New York!” Then she murmurs: “How quiet! and this for a whole year!” and sadness would come upon her; but she remembers there are Anglo Saxon friends in the house with her. She thinks, “Were it not for his thoughtfulness I should be alone and home sick. And I was unkind to him—not because of his proposition, but because”—then cries—“I hate her any way!”

    After this spurt of emotion, being tired with the railroad trip, and worried over Mr. Larchmont, Louise thinks she will take, after the manner of the Spanish, a siesta and forget everything; and climbs into her hammock. Being unused to this swinging bedstead, she gives a sudden shriek, for she finds herself grovelling on the floor; the management of this comfort of the tropics not being an accomplishment that is acquired in one siesta.

    Anon. 1902

    But the heat will not let her sleep, so she goes into a daydream, from which she is aroused by one of the young ladies of the household coming in, and crying: “Señorita Luisa, I have brought you some cigarettes!”

    “For me? I never smoke!” laughs the American girl, partly in dismay, partly in astonishment.

    “Not smoke?—and you speak Spanish!” says the Isthmus maiden in supreme surprise. “Let me teach you!”

    She lights up, and lolls upon the bedstead, telling the young American lady, to whom she seems to have taken a great fancy, that her name is Isabel, but all who love her call her Belita, giving out incidentally the petite gossip of Panama, between deft puffs of smoke that rise in graceful rings about her.

    Louise sits looking at her dreamily, thinking that Panama is a very quaint and quiet place, as it is to her, this afternoon.

    Mr. Larchmont’s experiences, however, are different. He drives into the town over much the same road as the Winterburns have taken, but stops at the Grand Hotel, and would engage a suite of apartments of most extraordinary extent and price for a man depending upon the salary of a clerk in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, or any other clerk for that matter, except, perhaps, some of the Canal Company, who are paid most extravagant prices; but suddenly Harry remembers he is supposed only to have one hundred and fifty dollars a month for his stipend, grows economical, and chooses quarters that do not please him and make him swear—this luxurious young man.

    Then having made himself as comfortable as the heat will permit, attired in the whitest linen, and a wide-brimmed sombrero de Guayaquil, which he has purchased in the French bazaar as he drove into town, Harry Larchmont steps out to see the sights of this arena upon which he has come two thousand miles, like a knight of old, to do battle for a young maiden, against the giant who has her in his toils.

    Like Amadis de Gaul and Saint George of Merry England, on his journeying he has found another Queen of Beauty to look upon the combat; and though her place is not on the imperial dais, and under its velvet canopy, still one smile from her would make his arm more potent, his sword more trenchant, his charge more irresistible, and nerve him to greater deeds of “daring do,” than those of the maiden for whom he battles, or those of any other maid in Christendom.

    So with chivalry in his heart, and a great wish to strike down Baron Montez, the evil champion opposed to him, though scarcely knowing where to find rent in his armor of proof, Sir Harry of Manhattan steps out upon the Plaza de Panama, to see a pretty but curious sight.

    A Spanish town turned into a French one!

    Not some quaint old village of Brittany, or Normandy, but a bright, dashing, happy-go-lucky, “Mon Dieu!” Cancan, French town! In fact, a little part of gay Paris transferred to the shores of the Pacific. A modern French picture in an old Spanish frame.

    As he leaves the hotel, the Café Bethancourt, just across the street, is filling up with young Frenchmen arrayed very much as they would be on the Champs Élysées or Boulevard des Italiens. They have come in, as they would in la belle Paris, to drink their afternoon absinthe.

    Open carriages, barouches, landaus, are carrying the magnates of the Canal management, with their wives and their children—or perhaps some one else—about the Plaza preparatory to their drive to the Savanna; which, unheeding the mists of the evening, they will take as they would in the Bois du Boulogne, though the miasma of one breeds death, and the breezes of the other bring life.

    All this looks very pretty to the gentleman as he strolls through the Plaza, between green plants and over smooth walks, and notes that about this great square none of the surrounding buildings, save the great Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace, have now the air of old Spain. The rest have become modern Parisian cafe̕s, offices, hotels, bazaars, or magazins.

    After a few moments’ contemplation of this, the young man says to himself: “But I came here for work! To discover the weak spots in this villain’s armor, it is necessary for me to know those who are acquainted with him, those who have business with him; in fact, the world of Panama! And to become acquainted with these novel surroundings, first my letters of introduction.”

    So he starts off, and after a few inquiries, finds the office of the American Consul General, which is just opposite the Bishop’s Palace, in the Calle de Comercio.

    Fortunately this dignitary is at home, and Harry, presenting his credentials, is most affably received, for his letters bear very strong names both socially and politically, in the United States.

    “I’ll put you up at the Club International immediately,” says the official. “There you will meet every body! Supposing you drop in there with me this evening?”

    “Delighted!” returns Harry, “provided you will dine with me first—where do they give the best dinners?”

    “Oh, Bethancourt’s as good as any.”

    “Well, dine with me there, will you? Half-past seven, I suppose’ll be about the hour.”

    “With pleasure,” answers the representative of America. And Mr. Larchmont, noting the official has business on his hands, leaves him and saunters off to kill time till the dinner hour, curiously enough asking the way to the house of Martinez the notary, but contenting himself with walking past and giving a searching glance at its windows, though he does not go in.

    Panama City, typical street scene, early 20th c. Library of Congress

    Then he strolls back to the hotel to dress, and being joined by the consul the two go to the swell café of Panama, where Mr. Larchmont gives the representative of Uncle Sam a dinner that makes him open his eyes and sets him to thinking, “What wondrous clerk has the Pacific Mail Company got, who spends half a month’s salary upon a tête à tête and that to a gentleman? Egad, I’d like to see this young Lucullus entertain ladies!” a wish this gentleman has granted within the next few days, in a manner that makes him and the whole town of Panama open their eyes; for Harry suddenly goes to playing a game at which he cannot be economical.

    This comes about in this manner. Larchmont and his new friend are enjoying their coffee, seated at one of the tables outside; scraps of conversation coming to them from surrounding tables. The one next to them is occupied by two excitable and high-voiced Frenchmen, one an habitue of the Isthmus; the other a later arrival.

    “I wish,” says the newcomer, “that I could get some definite word out of Aguilla about their contract with me. But he puts me off, saying that Montez when he arrives will attend to it. Now Baron Fernando likes the great Paris better than the little one. He has not been here for a year. I am waiting two months, and I’m rather fatigued!”

    “You won’t have to wait much longer,” laughs his companion, the Panama habitue. “Baron Fernando will shortly arrive.”

    “Ah, has his partner told you?”

    “No, Aguilla never says anything.”

    “Then how do you know?”

    “How?” says the old resident, with a wisely wicked smile. “By that!” and he points to a placard hanging on a wall nearby. Following his glance Harry Larchmont sees that it announces that Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Élysées of the Palais Royal, Paris, will shortly make her appearance at the Panama Theatre.

    “When Mademoiselle Bébé is announced, Baron Montez very shortly afterwards steps on the stage,” continues the gentleman at the table.

    “Ah, she is a friend of his?” queries the other.

    “Sans doute! So much of a friend that she never comes here without her cher ami, Baron Montez, arriving very shortly after her.”

    “You seem interested in the conversation next us, Larchmont,” whispers the consul. “Do you know the famed Baron Montez?”

    “A little!” answers Harry abstractedly, for he has just thought what he thinks a great thought, and is pleased with himself.

    It is something after this style: “Perhaps here is a flaw in my enemy’s armor of proof. Perchance Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Élysées has the confidences of her cher ami my adversary. Mayhap from her I can gain some knowledge that may give me vantage over him! “Then he laughs to himself quite merrily. “By Jove! what great friends Mademoiselle Be̕be̕ and I shall be!”

    With this rather unknightly idea in his mind, the young gentleman proceeds to pump the consul and everyone else he meets this evening, about the coming dramatic star at the Panama Theatre, and very shortly discovers that de Champs Élysées is a young lady, who, though she is by no means prominent on the Parisian boards, is considered a great card in Panama.

    This has been chiefly owing to the push that has been given to her artistic celebrity by the devotion of Baron Fernando, who has lavished a good deal of money and a good deal of time upon this fair élève of the café’s chantants and the Palais Royal.

    After a little, anxious to learn more about her, Harry proposes to his guest that they drop into the theatre. So they saunter to the temple of Thespis where a Spanish opera company that has come up from Peru is giving “High Life in Madrid”, which is so much like high life in Paris embellished by the chachucha and fandango instead of the cancan, that it greatly pleases the mixed French and Spanish audience.

    Though everyone else is interested in the performance, Mr. Larchmont is not. He is devoting himself to discovering all about the attraction that is to follow it. Getting acquainted with one of the attachés of the theatre, he learns that Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Élysées will arrive within a day or two, and appear probably the next Monday. That she is not a very great singer; that she is not a very great actress; that she is not a very great dancer; but that she is “a very diable” as the old door keeper expresses it.

    “However, Monsieur is young, handsome, and I hope rich. So he can soon see for himself,” suggests the old man with a French shrug of the shoulders.

    The opera over, Harry and the American official go to the Club International, which has been moved from its former quarters on the Grand Plaza, to a house called “The Washington,” somewhat nearer the railroad, and in the old Spanish quarter. Here they find some billiard-playing, some chess, and lots of Frenchmen, Spaniards, and in fact a good deal of the male high life of Panama.

    Mr. Larchmont is introduced right and left, and being anxious to make friends, soon has lots of acquaintances, for his offhand manner wins everybody. All that he learns here, using both tongue and ears with all their might, satisfies him on one point, and that is, that Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Élysées will know the secret thoughts of Baron Fernando Montez, if any one does.

    Ellen Baxone, Belle Epoque stage actress, Antique French postcard, 1905. From the Bygone.

    So he chuckles to himself: “I’ll nail this scoundrel Samson of Panama by this naughty Delilah of Paris!” and considers himself a very great diplomat, and a wonderful cardplayer in the game of life, as he goes to bed about three o’clock in the morning, which is a rather bad time for an industrious clerk to retire to rest, if he wishes to be at his duties in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s offices early the next morning.

    But even as Harry turns into bed, he mutters: “If she had been kinder, I should not have done this thing!”

    Still, notwithstanding his buoyant nature that considers half the battle won, this young gentleman, as he closes his eyes, gives half a sigh, and wonders what has been lacking in his life this day; then suddenly becomes wide awake, as he mutters: “By Jove! I have not seen her face—I have not looked into her eyes—or heard her voice for twenty-four hours!”

    Next grows angry and indignant and cries out: “Hang it! I will go to sleep. No woman shall keep me awake!”

    But notwithstanding this determination, he tosses about on a sleepless bed for an hour or two, and wonders if it is the mosquitoes of Little Paris.

    As for the object of his thoughts, she has passed a quiet evening with the Winterburns, and the family of old Martinez, who has lived a long time upon the Isthmus, and tells her anecdotes of the earlier days of Panama, before it became, as he calls it, “a French colony”.

    Some of his daughters are musical, and Louise and they sing snatches of the old operas together, in duos, trios, and quartettes, to the accompaniment of mandolin and guitar; music which seems in keeping with the tropic evening and quiet of this Spanish portion of Panama, which is half deserted after nightfall.

    Winterburn breaks in after each selection with a quaint mixture of American applause and Spanish bravos, sometimes saying with a sigh: “Tomorrow I’ll have to be going off to work on my Chagres dredger again at Bohio Soldado.”

    ‘“You have lived on the Isthmus a long time,” remarks Miss Louise. “I suppose now you’re used to it.”

    “Well, yes, pretty well. I’ve been on it so long that I know everything about it.”

    Then he astonishes the girl, by ejaculating suddenly: “Would you like to see my museum?”

    “Your what?” asks Louise.

    “My collection of curiosities. I’ve got most enough to run a dime show, in the U. S. Just let me add a couple of San Blas Indians, a live crocodile, an anaconda, and throw in a Spanish dancing girl, and the pen with which De Lesseps signs Panama bonds, and diablo! I will do a fine business on the Bowery!”

    “The Bowery!” says his wife. “Why, Silas, have you ever seen the Bowery?”

    “Yes, I saw it on my third wedding tour, ten years ago,” he remarks contemplatively. “Sally—she was the one before you—was very much taken with it also. I’ll give you a show at it, too, Susie, some day.”

    On this cheering remark Miss Minturn breaks in, saying: “The museum, quick!”

    “Then I’ll accommodate!” replies Silas genially. “I always like to accommodate pretty girls, even when they’re thick as candles in a cathedral, as they are about here,” and he looks around at the various señoritas of the Martinez family, with a jovial chuckle, and a horrible soto voce remark: “Perhaps some day, if I live long enough, I’ll be marryin’ one of ye.”

    So they all troop into a big room at the end of the house, which had once been occupied by domestic impedimenta of the Martinez family that are now crowded out by the collection of this pioneer of the Isthmus.

    It is a conglomeration of odds and ends picked up in nearly forty years of the Tropics. This he proceeds to walk around, giving a lecture very much after the manner of exhibitors of similar collections in the United States.

    “Here,” he says, “ladies and gentlemen, is the first spike that was ever driven in the Panama Railroad. I know it’s genuine, for I pried it out and stole it myself.

    “This,” he shouts, pointing to a hideous saurian of tremendous size, “is an alligator I killed myself down on the Mindee in ’55. There were lots of them there in those days—big fellers! This chap is reported to have eaten a native child, but I don’t guarantee that!

    “Here,” and he points to some curious images, “are some of the old statues taken from Chiriqui temples. Dug ‘em up myself, and can swear to their bein’ the real genuine. Archaeologists declare that they take us back as far as the times of most ancient record, equivalent to days of Pharo’s Egypt.

    “Lot number four is a bottle of snakes of my own killin’ also. The one with the big head is what the natives call the Mapana down on the Atrato, whose bite is certain death. Here is a Coral, likewise deadly. Killed it in the ruins of old Panama. And that reminds me—by-the-by, Miss Louise, I want to give you a little advice about snakes in this country. Most people will tell you there ain’t none about here. So there ain’t, in town here, and along the works of the Panama Canal and Railroad. But I remember in the days in old Gargona, when the passengers went down from the board hotel to take boat for Cruces early in the morning, and a negro boy always went ahead, swinging a lantern, to scare the creepers away. When you go into the country, you wear high boots, and don’t skip around old trees in openwork stockings!

    “Here is a counacouchi,” and he points to a stuffed snake some thirteen feet long. “The natives here call it a name I can’t pronounce, but it is the same as frightens people in Guiana under the high title of ‘Bushmaster’. It is the deadliest and fiercest viper on earth. He don’t wait for you to come at him—he comes at you. Look at them inch and a half fangs! There’s hyperdermics for ye!” And he shows the two fangs of that deadly snake, some of which inhabit the more inaccessible parts of this Isthmus of Panama, together with the no less dreaded lance-headed viper—the Isthmus prototype of the hideous Fer de lance of Martinique, and Labarri of Guiana, scale for scale, the only difference being that climatic changes have given different coloring to the snake.

    “Oh, no more of this,” shudders Louise. “I shall dream of snakes!” and turns away to examine a hideous idol.

    While doing this, she cries suddenly: “What is this?” and points to the branch of a large tree, in whose solid wood is imbedded a powder canister, which bears the stamp “Dupont Rifle Powder, 1852,” though age has rendered it scarcely legible.

    “The first,” says Silas, “is an idol that the Indians used to worship before the Spaniards taught ‘em better. The second is a proof of the wonderful growth of all vegetable substances in this rapid land. I was working my dredger on the main Chagres last rainy season. It was just after a flood, and there was a pile of brushwood coming down the river, when I seed somethin’ glisten in the floatin’ rubbish, as it went past me, and fished this out, and brought it over here. That tree must have been growin’ around that old Dupont powder canister that probably some California miner flung away, for perhaps thirty odd years, and has now become part of it.

    “Well! you have not much curiosity, though you are a Yankee!” laughs Louise.

    “Why?”

    “Because you have never removed the lead stopper from it. There might be something inside.”

    “Oh, open it, Silas!” cries his wife. “Perhaps there’s money in it!”

    “Oh, leave that for a rainy day. Ye can spend an afternoon investigating it, when I’m on the dredger. At present I am goin’ on with the museum: Lot number six. Bow and poisoned arrows. Have been used by the San Blas Injuns in fighting off surveyors and explorers. The high mountainous nature of the country prevents their bein’ conquered, and at present they are the only politically free people in the State of Panama!”

    “Hush!” cries the old notary, laughing. “Don’t touch on politics, my friend Winterburn.”

    “Oh, ho! Is there another revolution on foot?” inquires the Yankee, and goes on with the description of his collection.

    Some of his curiosities are very peculiar, notably an idol with revolving eyes.

    After a time, Miss Louise grows tired of idols, bows and arrows, snakes, lizards, and jaguars, and suggests that they leave the balance of the curiosities for another day, as she is anxious to be at her post early in the morning.

    Alone in her room, Silas’ warning about snakes impresses her so much that she climbs into her hammock, thinking with a shudder that it is safer than the bed. But she can’t sleep in the hammock and crawls timidly to the bed, and there forgets about snakes, for her pretty lips murmur—“Harry” as unconsciousness comes over her and closes her bright eyes.

    Notes and References

    • Carmelo Fernández watercolor: Fernández worked for the Comisión Corográfica of New Granada (present day Colombia and Panama): “The commission, which began work in 1850, studied the geography, cartography, natural resources, natural history, regional culture, and agriculture of New Granada”. He painted about 30 watercolours for them between 1850-52. Library of Congress, World Digital Library.
    • ‘San Blas Indians’: Showing Louis his collection, Silas makes a comment about the ‘Sans Blas Indians’, remarking that they are the only free people in the State of Panama. Sans Blas is a group of three hundred and sixty low-lying islands off the east coast of Panama in the Caribbean Sea. The Guna (Kuna) people who previously lived throughout Columbia and Panama, retreated to the islands to preserve their culture, and to escape other hostile tribes and the mosquitos of the mainland. They maintained their own religion and government, fiercely rejecting attempts to suppress their traditional culture. Following a successful revoltion in 1925, The Guna forged a treaty with Panama to retain their cultural autonomy. Self-governing, the islands are administered as a ‘country within a country’. San Blas province is rich in tradition. The Guna follow their own customs, laws, and legislation, and preserve their natural environment and heritage. See Howe, J. , A People Who Would Not Kneel: Panama, the United States and the San Blas Kuna. (Smithsonian Books 1998).
    • Sans doute: French – without a doubt
    • cafe chantants: a café where singers or musicians entertain the patrons
    • Thespis: Greek poet. First credited with appearing on stage as an actor portraying a character.
    • diable: devil
    • The Bowery: a street and neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan.
    • Chiriqui: Chiriqui Grande in the region of Bocas del Toro is a town located in Panama – some 177 mi or ( 285 km ) West of Panama City.
    • Sharon’s Vale: in the Bible it only occurs as the name of two separate regions: one is a pasture land east of the Jordan occupied by the sons of Gad (1 Chronicles 5:16), the other is the plain that covered much of the north coast of Israel (1 Chronicles 27:29).
    • Amadis de Gaul: 14th Century Spanish chivalry story series
    • Lucullus: Lucullus was a Roman general who is known for his campaigns in Asia Minor against Mithradates, but is even more renowned for the extreme luxury in which he lived, both in camp and at his estate outside Rome. The word “lucullan”, in fact, means extreme opulence. Jump to Reference

    Howe, J. A People Who Would Not Kneel: Panama, the United States and the San Blas Kuna ( Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 1998)

    Panama Hat: Historia del panama hat

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Monez: 14. Little Paris

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Monez: 14. Little Paris

    Following Louise’s outburst at Harry’s suggestion she spy for him, emotions are still up in the air. She remains stalwart, and Harry is flummoxed by her behavior. Following a request from the captain, Harry gets to strut his stuff once more with another young lady, much to the chagrin of Louise. However, Harry’s parting gesture is to secure her safe accommodation in Panama.

    The steamship completes its voyage at Colon on what was a ‘marshy islet‘ called Manzinillo. Relieved of the confines of shipboard relations, our romantic characters assume further depth through their interactions with other new characters: Mr. Stuart of the Pacific Mail company, who shows her around the town; and a flamboyant Silas Winterburn and his wife. Historically, the town of Colon had been a focus of ongoing political struggle and civil war in Colombia (bearing in mind that Panama was still a province of Colombia). Three years earlier than Gunter’s setting in 1888, Panamanian rebels had destroyed most of the town by fire, during the Panama crisis of 1885.

    Gunter provides descriptions and scenic notes on the train trip to Panama city, dramatizing the historical route. Works information given by Louise’s new friend’s husband, Silas Winterburn, is graphic and picturesque as the character himself. Starting from Colon (earlier called Aspinwall) on Manzinillo Island, they traverse the Mindee river, pass Monkey Hill (Mount Hope), and move on through the settlements of Gatun and Bohio Soldado (“Soldiers’ Home”). Crossing the Chagres River, they transit further villages along the line–Barbacoas, Gargona (Gorgona), and Culebra–before reaching Rio Grande station, Panama.

    Excavation of Culebra Cut (1896)

    Historically, apart from Yellow Fever, a gigantic excavation known as the Culebra Cut was the primary obstacle in engineering the Panama Canal. The Culebra, or ‘Snake river’ in English, is part of the Continental Divide, separating Lake Gatun on the Atlantic Ocean side from the Pacific Ocean access. In total, the French excavated 18,646,000 cubic yards of material from the Cut (Avery, p. 72). They reduced the height above sea level from 64 m (210 ft) to 59 m (193 ft) (Goethals).

    This chapter is the end of Book Three. Having settled his romantic characters in Panama, Gunter has his narrator comment on the possible future of the canal attempt. It is one thing for him to speculate on future fictional events; but hardly those of actual outcomes in the real world. In the novel, it is 1888, a crucial year in the history of the French undertaking to build the Panama Canal. In January, Gustav Eiffel’s men had arrived to make preparations for the installation of a series of locks. This was a major concession by De Lesseps, who had always insisted that the canal would be ‘à niveau’—at sea-level.

    The required funding did not eventuate, and by December1888 the company was declared bankrupt and placed in the hands of liquidators (Parker, pp. 180-182). Gunter is of course aware of these events; indeed, January, 1893, the year of the novel’s publication, saw De Lesseps and his son Charles before the courts. The narrator’s comments obliquely preface the coming collapse of the French enterprise and offer a forlorn prophecy regarding a return to Nature. Gunter did not live to see the United States’successfully complete the Panama Canal in 1914.

    CHAPTER 14

    LITTLE PARIS

    Neither Harry Larchmont nor Miss Louise Minturn make their appearance at lunch this afternoon upon the Colon.

    At dinner, only monosyllables pass between them, which the captain noticing whispers into Miss Louise’s pink ear to make it red: “Didn’t I tell you kisses stop at the gangplank?”

    Just here the seadog’s attention is fortunately attracted by what is happening to another young lady under his charge.

    Miss Madeline Stockwell, the pretty girl who is going to California to be married to the Los Angeles orange grower, oblivious of the vows she is journeying to take, has been indulging in a flirtation with the young Costa Rican, which has gradually grown from mild to tempestuous; from tepid to boiling hot!

    This young gentleman, not understanding English very well, has failed to catch what has been generally known about the ship, of this young lady’s engagement. But now, the voyage drawing to a close, some one has been kind enough to inform him, in good Spanish, that Miss Madeline, who has entangled him in the silken meshes of love, and whose bright eyes have grown to be very beautiful to him, and whom he has had wild dreams of transporting, after Church ceremony of course, to his coffee plantation near San Jose, is already promised to another!

    So all the afternoon Don Diego Alvarez has been going about with a Tibault glare in his eyes, and is now eating his dinner in a gloomy, vindictive manner, cutting into his salad as he would into the orange farmer’s throat, were he within knife reach.

    Soon after, all go on deck.

    Here is his opportunity. He steps towards the pretty Madeline, who has been hiding from him in her stateroom most of the day, and whispers something in her ear, at which she turns deathly pale, for she is now mortally frightened at this demon of Spanish love that she has conjured up, and that will not down.

    Noting this, the skipper, laying his hand on Larchmont’s shoulder, whispers to him: “Harry, will you do me a favor?”

    “Certainly, if possible.”

    “Well, here is a matter in which I cannot interfere unless I go to extreme methods. Young Alvarez is frightening that foolish girl. She has been silly enough to encourage him, and Spanish blood, when encouraged and then jilted, is sometimes obstreperous. Now you kindly take care of the young lady this evening. Tomorrow morning we will be at Colon, and after I have landed her, pretty Miss Madeline Stockwell can handle a Spanish flirtation as she pleases. Don’t leave her alone with him—that’s a good fellow!”

    Anon. vintage photograph

    Now Mr. Harry is exactly in the mood for something desperate himself. He has just had another short but exciting tête-à-tête with Miss Minturn, in a little dark spot of the deck that the rising moon has not yet intruded on.

    “You have not changed your mind about me, I see?” he has whispered, noting that Louise’s eyes are still uncompromising in expression.

    “Certainly not; about your proposition!”

    “And you accuse me of attempting to gain your friendship with the idea of making it?” the young man has asked hotly.

    “It would seem so. Why else?”

    “Why else? You are too modest. Don’t you think,” he has gone on warmly, “that you have other attractions than being the stenographer of Baron Montez? Didn’t I treat you with consideration before that? Did I ask your aid until those accursed letters showed me that you were probably his victim as well as my brother and Jessie?”

    “Oh, it is for Miss Severn’s sake that you ask me to do a thing I consider dishonorable? Learn that I consider a stenographer’s conscience as valuable as an heiress’s money!” the girl has muttered very haughtily, for her position makes her oversensitive. “Please do not speak to me again until you remember it also!”

    So turning away, she has left Larchmont in a very bad humor, for he feels he is badly treated. He has muttered to himself sarcastically: “I wonder if she thinks I saved her from the snow that night, because I divined she was going to be the stenographer of Montez, Aguilla et Cie.? She’s as unjust as she is beautiful.”

    Consequently at present Harry is about the worst person the captain could have chosen to pour oil upon the troubled waters of Miss Madeline Stockwell’s flirtation, although he accepts the office with alacrity. He whispers to the skipper: “See me cut the Costa Rican out!” then proceeds to join a tête-à-tête that is becoming exciting; for young Alvarez has just placed his hand upon his heart, and said with a rolling of the eyes: “Señorita, remember it is his life or my own! Tell that to your orange rancher!”

    “Good evening. Miss Madeline!” interjects Harry; and is very effusively received by the girl, who would be pleased at any time to receive attentions from this élève of New York society, but at this moment would be happy to have Old Nick himself intrude upon her interview with Don Diego.

    It is a little trembling hand that the American takes in his as Miss Stockwell whispers nervously: “I—I am delighted to see you, Mr. Larchmont. Permit me to present Señor Alvarez. I—I cannot always understand his Spanish. He speaks so fast and ex—excitedly.”

    “Can’t understand him, eh?” says Harry; “then permit me to be your interpreter;” and coolly places a steamer-chair between the young Costa Rican and his inamorata.

    Next turning upon the astonished Don, he mutters rather surlily: “Supposing you say to me what you were going to say to her.”

    “Say to you, Americano,” gasps the astounded Alvarez, “what I was going to say to the light of my soul, the Señorita Madeline?” Then looking at the American contemptuously, he says: “Bah! you do not interest me!”

    “Don’t I?” replies Harry courteously “Then perhaps Miss Maddy will be kinder to me. Don’t you think a promenade this pleasant night would suit you?” and he offers his arm to flirtatious Miss Stockwell, and takes her away, leaving the Costa Rican grinding his teeth at him, for Mr. Larchmont has a very tender manner with pretty girls, and Alvarez, noting his devotion to the young lady in the moonlight, includes him in his vendetta with the orange farmer, as rival number two.

    Harry’s attentions to Miss Stockwell are not unobserved by Miss Minturn, who thinks to herself: “He has not succeeded in gaining me over to his plans. Therefore I am of no more interest to him. See how he proves the truth of what I accuse him!” This feminine logic makes Louise’s heart grow very hard to Harry Larchmont, as he paces the deck of the Colon, whispering idle nothings to Miss Madeline Stockwell; for this young lady has a habit of thinking all men in love with her, and rolls her eyes most affectionately at the big fashionable creature, who she thinks has fallen before her charms.

    So Louise, growing desperate, mutters to herself: “If he shows indifference, why not I?” And Herr Alsatius Wernig chancing to come along, she receives his effusive attentions with a great deal more kindness than she has hitherto shown to him, and puts him in the seventh heaven of expectant delight, though ever and anon Mr. Larchmont turns an evil eye upon her, as he passes her on the deck.

    Consequently Miss Louise Minturn and Mr. Harry Larchmont, who had greeted each other this morning so warmly, go to bed this evening with bitter feelings in their hearts towards each other. Not the bitterness of hate, but the bitterness of love, which is sometimes equally potent, and ofttimes produces as unpleasant results.

    As for Miss Stockwell, she is radiantly happy. She imagines she has got rid of one flirtation that bothered her, and taken up another that she thinks will not bother her.

    Later in the evening, Mr. Larchmont, after packing his baggage, and getting in general order for going ashore next day at Colon, sits down and writes a letter, giving to it one or two sighs, and one or two imprecations; and just before going to bed, remarks: “So far, I don’t think my trip to Panama has been a success!” for this very evening he has added another enemy to his list—Don Diego Alvarez, the Costa Rican.

    The next morning, bright and early, everyone is up, for land has been sighted!

    From the deck, they see the distant Andes of South America.

    Then, after a time, from out its mists, they can distinguish the Tierras Calientes, that rise, a mass of tropical verdure, before them: from which, wafted by breezes over sparkling waves, are the odors of myriad plants and flowers. For what has been blustering, chilly spring in New York, is now early summer under the Equator.

    Then churning the blue waters, the great ship enters Navy Bay, and before them lies Manzinillo Island, on which stands the town of Colon—a mass of low red brick structures, brightened here and there by palm trees; embellished on its sea side by a number of parallel wharves that go straight into the bay, lined with the shipping of all nations.

    To their left are the pretty residences of the officers of the canal, on the Island of Christophe Colon, to which a causeway has been filled in, at great expense, by the ever-lavish Canal Interoceanic.

    Then the steamer running into her dock, ranges alongside the wharf, and ties up to it.

    All of this would have been noted with a good deal of interest by Miss Minturn, did not a more personal matter take up her attention.

    In the last moments of a voyage, just before landing, some of the niceties of ship etiquette are forgotten; and taking advantage of this, a pleasant looking round-faced woman, very neatly dressed, and leading by the hand a pretty child, leaves the second cabin, and coming to Miss Louise, presents a letter saying: “Mr. Larchmont asked me to give you this.”

    Looking over it, the girl is astonished by the following:

    Steamer Colon, March 30th, 1888.

    “Dear Miss Minturn:

    “Though you may consider it an impertinence, I take the liberty of making this suggestion to you. I have been thinking over the position in which you will be placed—a young lady, unknown, and alone in a foreign city—Panama.

    “Of course the firm by whom you are engaged, and Mr. Stuart, will do everything they can for your comfort; but still perhaps the matter of domicile may be a difficult one to you. You should have a home with some company and some protection.

    “Under the circumstances I venture to suggest to your favorable consideration, Mrs. Silas Winterburn. She has rooms and board in the Spanish family of an old notary named Martinez, in Panama—that is, when she is not with her husband, who is stationed with his dredger at this end of the Canal.

    “The Martinez family, she informs me, will be able to accommodate you, at a reasonable figure. Consequently I presume to mention this to you.

    “Yours most respectfully,

    “Harry Sturgis Larchmont.”

    Looking at these words, the girl sees the handwriting that came on the card with the violets, and her heart grows softer to the gentleman whose hand has penned this note.

    She says to the woman: “I am happy to meet you, Mrs. Winterburn. Mr. Larchmont has been kind enough to mention that you could assist me in obtaining a domicile in Panama;” and holds out a welcoming hand.

    This is cordially gripped by the woman, who replies:

    “Thank you very kindly! I hope you will come with me. It will be so nice to have someone to talk to in English. The other time I was there, I did not understand Spanish, or French, and it was so lonely!”

    As she says this, the steamer is at the wharf, and Louise finds herself face to face with a kindly-looking florid gentleman, whom the captain introduces as Mr. Stuart of the Pacific Mail, and to whom Miss Minturn presents her letter of introduction.

    As he is reading it, Mrs. Silas Winterburn and her pretty child have been hugged, kissed, and hugged again, by a peculiar-looking man, who was once tall, but has apparently been shrivelled by the sun from six feet one to five feet ten.

    “Miss Minturn, this is my husband!” says the woman very proudly.

    And the man adds: “By Plymouth Rock and Sanctus Dominus! I’m almighty glad to grip such a pretty girl by the hand.”

    “Oh, how do you do, Winterburn?” remarks Stuart cordially, looking at the mechanic.

    “Quite spryish, governor,” is the answer.

    Here Miss Minturn takes opportunity of explaining what Mr. Larchmont had suggested in the letter.

    After a moment’s consideration, Mr. Stuart says: “I really think that would be the best plan for you in Panama. Of course I shall see you safely onboard the cars, and that all preparations are made for your pleasant transport across the Isthmus. But though I can engage rooms for you in Panama, by telegraph, I do not think for a young lady situated as you are, they will be as pleasant as those in the family of old Martinez, the notary, where you will have at least American society and the protection of honest Silas Winterburn and his wife.”

    “Oh, everybody knows me,” remarks Silas, “from Colon to Panama, and from the Atrato to Chiriqui! I am the American pioneer of the Isthmus!”

    “The pioneer of the Isthmus?” echoes Louise, astonished.

    “Yes! Caramba! I beg your pardon!—I beg your pardon! I sometimes swear in Spanish from force of habit. I was a fireman on the first through train on the railway in ’55.”

    “And have you been here ever since?”

    “I’ve buried three families here, of yellow fever,” says the man, wiping a tear from his eye. Then he goes on in a happier voice: “But I’ve got started with number four!” And looking with loving eyes upon his wife, he whispers: “I think she’ll last me through. The other three were timid things from factories in Mass’chusetts, and most died of fright at the thought of Yellow Jack!”

    This is said in a manner that astonishes Miss Minturn, for Silas seems to suffer agony at the remembrance of his three lost families, but to be equally happy in the contemplation of the present one.

    By this time they have all got ashore, Louise noting that Mr. Larchmont is well ahead of her, and already in conversation with one or two officers of the Panama Railroad, who chance to be Americans he has seen in New York. This young man’s chief object now seems to be to make acquaintance with everybody on the Isthmus, and apparently he is succeeding.

    Then genial Mr. Stuart shows his pretty charge over the town, which consists chiefly of two rows of houses and stores running the length of the island, with the Panama Railroad shops on the south end of it, and the attachment called Christophe Colon at the north, and the canal, which is the Chagres River turned from its course, running past it: all this with a few palm and cocoanut trees thrown in, a mangrove swamp behind it, and a series of wharves in front of it that run out into the blue waves and soft surf which ripples upon a beach of coral sand.

    Half an hour of this is sufficient; then Mr. Stuart puts Louise on the train beside Mrs. Winterburn, the happy Silas and his little daughter occupying the opposite seat. The cars are crowded by a heterogeneous mass of foreigners. The bulk of the conversation however is French, for this canal with its thousand officers and myriad laborers in 1888, had made the Isthmus from Colon to Panama practically a French colony.

    Mr. Larchmont is not on the car in which Miss Minturn is seated. Therefore she does not speak to him, though she would have liked to; for she is beginning to repent of her hasty expressions towards him, which had been caused not only by his proposition, but by Miss Severn’s connection with it.

    She is even now thinking, “His letter this morning brought me protection, when I had treated him harshly. He has done me many kindnesses; and I have refused to do him one! I don’t think I could ever bring myself to his proposition, still I forgive him for making it. Yesterday, jealousy made me cruel!”

    Then she mutters to herself: “Jealousy! Pshaw! I am not jealous! Whom am I jealous of?” And glares around as if to find out the person on the train, but only catches the eye of Mr. Winterburn.

    This eccentric says: “What’s the matter, sissy? Are you looking for a beau? There’s plenty here. Por Dios! I beg your pardon for the swear. Most every one’s unmarried about here. By all the saints in the Cathedral! bachelors and widowers predominate.”

    “You—you seem to be very well acquainted with the Isthmus, Mr. Winterburn,” stammers the girl, throwing off meditation. “You say you are a pioneer?”

    “Yes, had the fever in 1856 and got acclimated. Since then I have found it as healthy as the Penobscot—for me! Other people sicken and die, but I thrive. I reckon, when we were building this railroad, we planted a man for every tie. Now I think the Canal is even beatin’ our average.”

    This eulogium upon the climate of the Isthmus gives Louise a shiver; she turns the conversation by suggesting: “You must have seen many curious things here?”

    “Yes, everything from revolution and riot, to balls and fandangos.”

    “Revolution and riot!” says the girl, and is about to ask him something eagerly, when glancing out of the car window she suddenly ejaculates: “How beautiful! How fairylike!”

    For the train has run out of Colon, and leaving the island, is dashing through the swamps of the Mindee that are fairylike in beauty, but awful in miasma and death.

    So they come to the mainland with its rank vegetation, in which are trees of a myriad species, flowers of a thousand hues, vines and creeping plants, each different from the other, making a thicket that is a garden.

    So passing Monkey Hill, they reach Gatun, getting here a first glimpse of the main Chagres; and turning up its valley, the cars run under great lignum vita; trees covered with parasites, and palms of every species, from the giant grande̕ to those of smaller stem and more feathery leaves.

    Every now and then, they pass a little native rancho with its thatched roof, and inevitable banana plantation. These are varied by occasional orange groves, and now and then a glimpse of the Chagres River, quiet and limpid in this the dry season, and rippling peaceably between banks of living green to the Caribbean. It is now disturbed, here and there, by the huge dredgers of the American Company—great masses of machinery that scrape the mud of the river from its bottom, to build up side walls to protect its banks.

    “It is one of them fellows that I work on as engineer, Miss Minturn,” says Winterburn, looking up from his little daughter, who has grown tired, and is sleeping contentedly in his lap.

    Now and again they get glimpses of trading stations for canal laborers, some of them kept by Chinamen, till finally they arrive at Bohio Soldado.

    “That’s my place of residence!” ejaculates Silas, who has now become communicative. “But I’ve three days leave, and so I’ll see you and the old lady through to Panama. Do you note that p’int?” he says, after twenty minutes more travel, “that’s the head of the dredging, and from there on, the Canal Company tackles not mud, but rocks. And rocks,” here he whispers to the girl, a curious twinkle in his eye, “is what’ll down ’em!”

    And then passing the great bridge over the river at Barbacoas they run up the other bank to Gargona, and from that on, by gradually increasing grades, come to Culebra, where the Canal people have their deepest cut to make.

    The Conquerors (Culebra Cut, Panama Canal), 1913, Jonas Lie (Source Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

    “Oh, goodness!” cries the girl, “what an enormous excavation!”

    “It’s the biggest in the world,” answers Silas. Then he whispers confidentially, “But there is five times as much more to dig.”

    “Why,” cries Louise, “they’ll never do it!”

    “Not this trip! Por la Madre!” assents Winterburn solemnly.

    But other views drive Culebra from the girl’s mind. They are descending the mountain; before them the great savanna that leads to Panama, and the white waters of the Pacific. Running down through hills that gradually become smaller, they come to the Rio Grande station, and first see the river that is to be the western waters of the canal.

    From there on, dashing over savannas ever green, they note at their right hand, some gray buildings on a hill.

    “That’s the Canal yellow-fever hospitals, where the poor critters will get a little breeze,” says Silas, eager to do the honors of the Isthmus.

    But leaving these, three miles away they run into a little station where carriages with native drivers are waiting for them, to drag them through dirty lanes into the town of Panama itself.

    This is now a little Paris. French people jabber about them at the station, and the language of Normandy and Brittany dominates the Spanish tongue; for la belle France has come over the Isthmus to capture Panama.

    Twice before this has been attempted. Twice with success! Once Morgan and his daring band of every nation freebooters came up the Chagres, and conquering, bore away with them the treasures of the western ocean. Then American enterprise fought its way with iron rail through the swamps of the Mindee, and up the valley of the Chagres, and through the gate of the mountains, and reached this town, to take its tribute from the commerce of the world, and pay to stockholders the dividends of Dives.

    And now comes France—not to cross the Isthmus, but to drive through it, and thus levy toll upon the navies of the sea!

    The Isthmus, subdued twice, will it be conquered again? Nature—the awful giant nature of the tropics—will it triumph? Will this land go back to nature, and become silent as when the Spanish Conquestadores first landed on its shores to make the Indians curse the white sails which bore to them a Christianity that came with blood and bigotry, to make them slaves?

    Notes and References

    • ‘this élève of New York Society’: élève meaning ‘student’, in the sense of l’élève de la nature, ‘the student of nature’ (e.g., De Beaurieu, 1789).
    • inamorata: A woman loved in a romantic way is one’s inamorata. From the Italian innamorare, “to fall in love”. Vocabulary.com
    • Tierras Calientes: Tierra caliente (hot land) includes all areas under about 900 m (3000 ft). These areas generally have a mean annual temperature above 25°C (77°F). Their natural vegetation is usually either tropical evergreen or tropical deciduous forest. Farms produce tropical crops such as sugar-cane, cacao and bananas. – Geo-Mexico.com
    • Penobscot: North American Idian tribe. ‘The word “Penobscot” originates from a mispronunciation of their name for themselves: Penawapskewi. The word means “the people of where the white rocks extend out” and originally referred to their territory on the portion of the Penobscot River between present-day Old Town and Verona Island, Maine’ (Wikipedia).
    • Dives: the rich man of the parable in Luke 16:19–31. Any rich man. Pron. dahy-veez (Dictionary.com). ‘Dives’: Latin for ‘rich’. See Mainly Norfolk.

    Avery, Ralph E. America’s Triumph in Panama. Chicago, 1913: L.W. Walter Co.. Freely available at Internet Archive

    Goethals, Colonel George W. (Chief Engineer). The Panama Canal (Address to National Geographic Society Feb., 1911)

    Parker, M. Hell’s Gorge:The Battle to Build the Panama Canal. Arrow Books, 2007

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 13. A Bundle of Letters

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 13. A Bundle of Letters

    The nexus of the Louise Minturn and Harry Larchmont characters is reached: their shared connection to Fernando Montez. This is all as the reader might expect from knowledge of Louise’s letters. However, Gunter wants to create a selective perspective of prior events involving Harry that the reader may later share with Louise. Not content with the attributes and qualities he has endowed his characters, Gunter seeks to intrude on the imaginative mental stream of the reader to frame and accentuate the action through his narrator and by other means.

    In Harry’s repartee with Louise in the last chapter, he revealed more of the ‘player’ he is reputed to be. At the close of the chapter, his impetuous act in separating Louise from the presence of Wernig weighs heavy on him, though his thoughts dwell, not on the beautiful Louise, but on his next steps to retrieve his brother’s fortune.

    Though there is no desire to disrupt the reader experience, in order to explore Gunter’s narrative strategy some notes on the content of the chapter ahead is required.

    Harry is on deck smoking cigars again one night, still, one would think, intoxicated with the vision of beauty that was Louise as she left him. Yet it appears in his meditations he has become resolute in a course of action of which some might be critical, perhaps deem dishonorable. Though having access to Harry’s more precise thoughts, Gunter declines to reveal them, and so leaves the reader guessing. Little mysteries add realism to a modern novel as they are part of everyday life, but this has the dramatic touch of deliberate obfuscation.

    At one juncture while informing Louise of the plight of his Francophile brother, Harry bemoans the lack of teaching of American culture in schools. He mentions the nascent sports of baseball and football (we know what becomes of them). But beyond this, one might ask; to what American culture is he referring? The U.S. may boast a number of technical and industrial development achievements, and there are substantial literary best sellers throughout the nineteenth century. Novels such as The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, Uncle Toms Cabin by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, Moby Dick by Herman Melville and the very popular Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain which sold in the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. and overseas. And for generations without radio or film or television, and limited access to the theatre or books, entertainment was the circus coming to town. New railways meant the circus could reach many more thousands of people throughout America, and steamships meant many more overseas; Europe and even as far as Australia (Worrall). America’s chief cultural exports of the time were Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth billed as a circus, museum and menagerie (Watkins).

    This isn’t the first time via Harry this apparent manifestation of inverse cultural cringe (Phillips) has presented with a skew-whiff reasoning. Describing his brother, he equates U.S. disaffiliation with loss of manhood. Gunter is something of a showman himself, and providing entertainment and being sensational is his game. Sensational, to his contemporary audience, is a nineteen-year-old young woman travelling alone without a companion on a steamship to a foreign country, but that is not sufficient. The author wants to provoke emotion-based opinions in his readers where none may have existed. The well-to-do are an easy target for prejudice, and patriotic transgression adds a certain righteousness.

    Woman with a Guitar (n.d.), Julio Romero De Torres (1874-1930)

    Louise has been portrayed as independent, beautiful, at times haughty with strong sense of personal worth, smart, accomplished and not afraid to speak her mind. Shortly after the letters appear, the reader may note an abrupt temporary change in dialogue attributions for our female character. Where before it was ‘Louise’, ‘Miss Minturn’ even ‘the young lady’, now it is ‘the girl’. An apparent attempt through subliminal manipulation to present Louise in an inferior position. So too is the narrator’s suggestion of a tone of proprietorship in Harry’s voice in respect of Louise’s morning agenda, which includes inspecting the letters.

    Louise’s letters are the focus of the chapter, though Harry’s persistence seems a little uncharacteristic, which even Louise remarks upon. On a comment from Harry regarding activities post letter-reading, the narrator cannot resist an amused aside from insider knowledge of what is to come—part of egging the reader on.

    Gunter, through his narrator, is the ringmaster of the various elements of the story that inhabit the reader’s imagination. In a previous intro we covered the paucity of entertainment available to the common man and woman, excluding a possible circus visit. Before the visual artistic forms of film and television, the novel was the chief direct access to the active mental plane of individuals—through their eyes. Reminders of the narrator’s aural presence as storyteller, of being read to by a third entity have the effect of distracting from the smooth ongoing visual transmission to imagination. There is a shift away from the self-created illusion of reality to acknowledging an amusing fictional entertainment. As the crescendo of the chapter becomes imminent, the narrator cannot resist a snide comment which raises jealousy over integrity as motivation, perhaps to dilute the colour of Louise’s final response, and perhaps also to secure for the author an avenue for later re-engagement.

    And now ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, for your reading pleasure, if you will direct your attention to the centre of the page below. Furin Chime is proud to present, for the first time in a hundred and twenty-five years—the next chapter in the Baron Montez saga! Please enjoy the show!

    CHAPTER 13

    THE BUNDLE OF LETTERS

    The next day Herr Wernig has become again effusively affectionate and thrusts his society upon Mr. Larchmont, though that young gentleman gives him but little chance, as he is again devoting himself to the second cabin passengers.

    This time, he has dropped the society of the man Bastien Lefort for that of one of the second-cabin ladies.

    This lady has a little child of about five. With paternal devotion Harry takes this tot up and carries it about, as he talks to the mother. This attention seems to win the lady’s heart. And he spends a good deal of the morning promenading by her side. By the time he returns to lunch in the first cabin, “his flirtation,” as they express it, has been pretty well discussed by the various ladies and gentlemen of the after part of the ship. Of course it comes to Miss Minturn’s pretty ears, and sets her wondering.

    After an afternoon siesta—for the boat is now well in the tropics, and everybody is drifting with it into the languid manners of the torrid zone—Louise strolls on the deck for a little sea breeze, and chancing to meet the gentleman of her thoughts, puts her reflections into words.

    “Travel views of Cuba and Guatemala” (1899–1926), Genthe photograph collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

    This subject is easily led up to, as Mr. Larchmont even now has in his arms the little girl from the second cabin.

    “Miss Louise,” he says, “this is a new friend of mine. This is pretty little Miss Minnie Winterburn, the daughter of a machinist on one of the Chagres dredgers. Her father has been out there almost since the opening of the railroad. He is by this time used to yellow fever.”

    “And her mother?” suggests the young lady rather pointedly, for Harry’s speech has been made in a rambling, semi-embarrassed manner.

    “Oh, her mother,” returns Mr. Larchmont, “is on board in the second cabin. She is much younger than her husband—third or fourth wife—that sort of thing, you understand. I have brought the little lady aft to get some oranges from the steward.” Which fact is apparent, as the child is playing with two of the bright yellow fruits. “If you will excuse me, I’ll return my little friend to maternal arms, and be with you in a minute. Let me make you comfortable on this camp stool.”

    Arranging the seat for her, Harry strolls off with the little girl. As he walks away the young lady’s eyes carelessly follow him; suddenly they grow tender. She notices the careful way he carries the little tot, and it reminds her of how he had borne her through the snow and ice of that awful New York blizzard.

    Apparently the emotion has not left her eyes when Larchmont returns to her; for he says, his eyes growing tender also: “Tonight we will have another musical evening?”

    “Oh, I’m not going to sing for you this evening,” ejaculates the young lady lightly, for seats beside each other three times a day at the dining table, and the easy intercourse of shipboard life have made her feel quite en camarade with this young gentleman, save when thoughts of her diary bring confusion upon her.

    “Why not?”

    “Oh! Second cabin society in the daytime, second cabin romance at night.”

    “Was there a first cabin romance last night?” asks the gentleman, turning embarrassing eyes upon her.

    “No—of course not—I—I didn’t mean anything of the kind!” stammers Louise.

    “Indeed! What did you mean?”

    “I meant,” says the girl, steadying herself, “that you seem to prefer second cabin society during the daytime—why not enjoy it also in the evening?”

    Whereupon he startles her by saying suddenly: “How a false position makes everything appear false! I presume, Miss Minturn, you imagine I enjoy the patois of Monsieur Bastien Lefort, and the good-hearted but homely remarks of the wife of the machinist—but I don’t!”

    “Then why associate with them?”

    “That for the present must be my secret! Miss Louise, we have been very good friends on shipboard. Don’t go to imagining—don’t go to putting two and two together—simply believe that I am just the same kind of an individual as I was five days ago.” Then he brings curious joy upon her, for he whispers impulsively, a peculiar light coming into his eyes: “No, not the same individual!” and gives the young lady’s tempting hand, that has been carelessly lying upon the arm of her steamer chair, a sudden though deferential squeeze; and with this, leaves her to astonished meditation.

    She does not see him till dinner, which he eats with great attention to detail and dishes. But, though he says very little, every now and then he turns a glance upon her that destroys her appetite.

    At dessert, this is noted by the captain, who in his affable sailor way, with loud voice suggests: “What’s the matter with your appetite, Miss Louise? Has the guitar playing of last night taken it away? Not a decent meal since yesterday.”

    “Oh,” replies the young lady, “the weather is too hot for appetite!”

    “But not for flirtations!” says the awful seadog. Then he turns a winking eye upon Larchmont, and chuckles: “Remember, Harry, kisses stop at the gang plank!”

    “Not with me!” says the young man, determination in his face and significance in his tone: “If I made love to a girl on shipboard, I should make love to her—always: I’m no sailor-lover!” With this parting shot at the skipper he strolls from the table, and goes away to after dinner cigar.

    “By Venus, we’ve a Romeo on board!” cries the captain. “Where’s the Juliet?” and turns remorseless eyes upon Miss Minturn.

    Fortunately this little episode has not been noticed by any of her fellow passengers, nearly all of them having left the table before Mr. Larchmont.

    A moment after, Louise follows the rest on deck, blushes on her cheeks, brightness in her eyes, elasticity in her step. She is thinking: “If he loved me, he would love—always. Did he mean that for—” Here wild hope stops sober thought; but after this there is a curious diffidence in her manner to Mr. Larchmont, though she does not avoid his companionship—in fact, from now on, he can have her society whenever he will, which is very often.

    This evening he asks for more songs, and gets them, perhaps even more soulfully given than the evening before. So the night passes.

    And the next day is another pleasant tropic one, that the two dream out together under the awnings, with bright sunshine overhead, and rippling waves, that each hour grow more blue, running beside them as the great ship draws near the Equator.

    And there is a new something in both their eyes, for the girl has thrown away any defences that her short year’s struggle with the world of business may have put about her, and is simply a woman whom love is making more lovely; and the gentleman has forgotten the conservatism of his conservative class, and is becoming ardent as the sun that puts bronze upon their blushing faces.

    So the second evening comes upon them, and the two are again together on the deck, and the strings of the girl’s guitar seem softer and her voice is lower.

    Then the crowd on deck having melted away, their moonlight téte à téte, as the soft blue ripples of the Caribbean roll past them, grows confidential. Drawn out by the young man, Miss Minturn, gives him her past history, which interests him greatly, especially that portion referring to the disappearance of her mother’s parents on the Isthmus.

    He suggests, “In Panama, perhaps you may learn their fate.”

    “But that was so long ago,” says Louise.

    “Nevertheless—supposing you look through your old letters. It won’t do any harm. Let me help you. It will give us a pleasant morning’s occupation,” goes on Harry, quite eagerly.

    “Don’t you think you could be happy without the letters?” laughs Louise. Then she suddenly whispers: “Oh, they are putting out the lights!” and rises to go.

    “Blow the lights!” answers Larchmont, who is out of his steamer chair, and somehow has got hold of Miss Louise’s pretty hand. “Promise the morning to me.”

    “The whole morning?”

    “Why are you so evasive? Promise—will you?”

    “Yes, if you will stop squeezing my hand. You—you forget you have football fingers!” gasps Louise; for his fervid clasp upon her tender digits is making her writhe.

    “Forgive me!”

    “O-o-oh!”

    He has suddenly kissed the hand, and the girl has flown away from him.

    At the companionway she turns, hesitates, then waves adieu, making a picture that would cause any man’s heart to beat. The moonlight is full upon her, haloing her exquisite figure that is draped in a soft white fluttering robe that clings about it, and would make it ethereal, were not its round contours and charming curves of beauty, those of the very birth of graceful, glorious womanhood. One white hand is upraised, motioning to him; one little slippered foot is placed upon the combing of the hatchway. Her eyes in the moonlight seem like stars. Her lips appear to move as she glides down the companionway. Then the stars disappear, and Harry Larchmont thinks the moon has gone out also.

    He sits there meditating, and after a little, his lips frame the words: “If I did, what would they say?” Then rising, he shakes himself like a Newfoundland dog that is throwing the water from him, tosses his head about, puts his hand through his curly hair, laughs softly, and says to himself: “Hanged if I care what anyone says!”

    Curiously enough, he does not go to the cardroom this evening, for he paces the deck for some two hours more, meditating over three or four cigars that he smokes in a nervous, excitable, fidgety manner.

    The next morning, however, as Miss Louise, a picture of dainty freshness, steps on the deck, he is apparently waiting for her. His looks are eager. There is perchance a tone of proprietorship in his voice as, after bidding her good morning, he says: “A turn or two for exercise first, then breakfast, and then the letters!”

    “Oh, you are beginning business early today,” laughs the young lady, whose eyes seem very bright and happy.

    “Yes. You see I want all your morning.”

    “Then you will have to read very slowly,” suggests Miss Louise, “or the letters will not occupy you till lunch time.”

    “After the letters are finished, there will doubtless be something else,” remarks the young man confidently; and in this prediction he is right, though he would stand aghast if he knew what he prophesied.

    So the two go down to breakfast together, and make a merry meal of it, as the captain, occupied by some ship’s duty, is not there to embarrass them by seadog asides and jovial nautical jokes that bring indignant glances from the young man, and appealing blushes from the young lady.

    They have finished their oranges when Mr. Larchmont says eagerly: “The letters!”

    “They are too numerous for my pocket!” answers the girl.

    “You have not read them?”

    “Not for years. In fact, I’ve forgotten all there is in them, except their general tone; but I fished them out of my trunk last night.”

    “Very well! Run to your cabin, and I’ll have steamer chairs in the coolest place on deck, where the skipper will be least likely to find us,” replies Harry; and the young lady, doing his bidding, shortly returns to find a cosy seat in the shadiest spot under the awnings, and Mr. Larchmont awaiting her.

    “Ah, those are they!” he says, assisting her, with rather more attention than is absolutely necessary, to the steamer chair beside him, and gazing at a little packet of envelopes grown yellow by time, and tied together with a faded blue ribbon. “These look as if they might contain a good deal.”

    “Yes,” replies the girl, “they contain a mother’s heart!”

    Looking over these letters that cover a period of four years, they find that Louise is right. They have been carefully arranged in order. Most of them are simply descriptions of early life in California, and of Alice Ripley’s husband’s efforts for fortune and final success; but every line of them is freighted with a mother’s love.

    The last four bear much more pointedly upon the subject that interests the young man and the young lady The first of these is a letter describing Alice Ripley and her husband’s arrival at San Francisco en route for New York, and mentioning that she encloses to her daughter a tintype taken of her by Mr. Edouart, the Californian daguerreotypist.

    “You have the picture?” asks Mr. Larchmont.

    Vintage photograph (n.a.)

    “Yes,” says the girl. “I brought it with me, thinking you might like to look at it,” and shows him the same beautiful face, the same blue eyes and golden hair that had delighted the gaze of Señor Montez in faraway Toboga in 1856.

    “It is rather like you,” suggests Harry, turning his eyes upon the pretty creature beside him.

    “Only a family likeness, I think,” remarks the young lady.

    “Of course not as beautiful!” asserts the gentleman.

    “I wish I agreed with you,” laughs Louise. Then she suddenly changes her tone and says: “But we came here to discuss letters, not faces,” and devotes herself to the other epistles.

    The second is a letter written by Alice Ripley from Acapulco, telling her child that sickness has come upon her; that she is hardly able to write; still, God willing, that she will live through the voyage to again kiss her daughter.

    The third, in contradistinction to the others, is in masculine handwriting, dated April 1oth, 1856, and signed “George Merritt Ripley.”

    “That is from my grandfather,”says Louise.

    Looking over this letter, Larchmont remarks: “A bold hand and a noble spirit!” for it is a record of a father’s love for his only daughter, and it tells of the mother’s illness and how he had brought his wife to Panama, fearing death was upon her, but that a kind friend, he has made on the Isthmus, has suggested that he take the invalid to Toboga. That on that island, thank God, the sea breezes are bringing health again to her mother’s cheeks.

    There is but one letter more, a long one, but hastily written upon a couple of sheets of note paper. This is inside one of Wells, Fargo & Company’s envelopes, for in 1856 the express company carried from California to the East, nearly as much mail matter as the United States Government.

    It reads as follows:

    “Panama, April 15th, 1856.

    “My Darling Mary:

    “I write this because you will get it one day before your mother’s kisses and embraces. Can you understand it? When you receive this, I shall be but one day behind it—for it will come with me on the same steamer to New York; but there, though I would fly before it, circumstances are such that it will meet you one day before your mother.

    “Tears of joy are in my eyes as I write; for by the blessing of God, once more I am well and happy, and so is your dear father.

    “How happy we both are to think that our darling will be in our arms so soon! We are en route to New York. Think of it, Mary—to you! We left Toboga this morning.

    “I am writing this in the Pacific House where we stay tonight, to take the train for Aspinwall tomorrow morning.

    “The gentleman who has been so kind to your father and me, has come with us from Toboga, to see the last of us. He has just now gone into the main town of Panama, which gives me time to write this, for your father and I have remained here. It is so much more convenient for us to rest near the station, the trunk is so heavy—the trunk your father is bringing filled with California gold dust for his little daughter. I have a string of pearls around my neck, which shall be yours also. Papa bought them today from Senor Montez.”

    At this Harry, who has been reading, stops with a gasp, and Louise cries: “Montez! That’s what made Montez, Aguilla et Cie. so familiar! Montez! It was the name in this old letter!” Then she whispers: “How curious! Can my employer be the man of this letter?”

    “He is!” answers Harry, for while the girl has been whispering, he has been glancing over the last of the manuscript. He now astounds her by muttering: “See, here’s his accursed name!”

    “What do you mean?” stammers Miss Minturn.

    “That afterwards,” goes on Mr. Larchmont; then he hastily reads:

    “This gentleman has been inexpressibly kind to us. George says that he saved me from death by the fever, because he took us to the breezes of Toboga.

    “On parting, my husband offered him any present that he might select, but Senor Fernando Gomez Montez (what a high-sounding name!) said he would only request something my husband had worn—his revolver, for instance—as a souvenir of our visit.

    “I am hastily finishing this, because I am at the end of my paper. There is quite a noise and excitement outside. Papa is going down to see what it is, and will put this letter into Wells, Fargo & Company’s mail sack, so that my little daughter may know that her father and mother are just one day behind it—coming to see her grow up to happy womanhood, and blessing God who has been kind to them and given them fortune, so that they may do so much for their idol.

    “With a hundred kisses, from both father and mother, my darling, I remain, as I ever shall be,

    “Your loving mother,

    “Alice Louise Ripley.

    “P. S. Next time I shall give the kisses in person! Think of it! Lips to lips!”

    “Does not this bear a mother’s heart? “whispers Miss Louise, who has tears in her eyes.

    “Yes, and the record of a villain!” adds Harry impulsively.

    “What do you mean?”

    “I mean this,” says the gentleman. “Last evening you told me that your mother’s parents and treasure disappeared during a negro riot upon the Isthmus on April 15th, 1856, the day this letter was written, Their gold was with them. That was their doom! Had they not carried their California dust under their own eyes, they would have lived to embrace their daughter!”

    “What makes you guess this?” asks the girl, her face becoming agitated and surprised.

    “I not only guess it—I know it!—and that he had something to do with it!”

    “He—who?”

    “Señor Fernando Gomez Montez!”

    “Why, this letter speaks of him as a friend who had saved her life!”

    “That was to gain the confidence of her husband, so he could betray him. Why did he ask for George Ripley’s revolver, so as to leave him unarmed? His nature is the same today! He has also betrayed another bosom friend!” says Harry excitedly.

    “Tell me what you know about him!” whispers the girl eagerly.

    To this, after a momentary pause of thought, Larchmont replies: “I will—I must!” And now astounds her, for he mutters: “I need your aid!”

    “My aid! How?”

    “Listen, and I will tell you all in confidence,” answers the young man. Then he looks upon her and mutters: “You have no interest to betray me?”

    “Betray you?” she cries, “you who saved my life? No, no, no!” and answers his glance.

    “Then,” says the young man, “listen to the story of a Franco American fool!”

    “Oh, don’t speak of yourself so!”

    “No,” he laughs bitterly, chewing the end of his mustache; “I am referring to my brother!”

    “Oh, your French brother!” cries the young lady, “the one your uncle sneered about.”

    “The one I shall sneer about also, and you will by the time you know him!” This explosion over, Mr. Larchmont goes on contemplatively: “My brother is not a bad fellow at heart. Had he been brought up differently, he might have had more force of character, though I don’t think it would have ever been a strong one.”

    Then his voice grows bitter as he continues: “There is a school in New Hampshire, or Vermont, called Saint Regis, the headmaster of which, had he lived in ancient Greece, would have been promptly and justly condemned, by an Athenian jury, to drink the juice of hemlock, and die—for corrupting the youth of the country; because he makes them unpatriotic and un-American. This gentleman is a foreigner—a man of good breeding, but though he educates the youth of this country—some five or six hundred of them—he still despises everything American. He calls his classes ‘Forms,’ after the manner of the English public schools. He frowns upon baseball because it is American, and encourages cricket because it is an English game. He tries to make his pupils foreigners, not Americans. Not that I do not think an English man is better for England, or a Frenchman better for France, but I know that an American is better for America! Therefore he injures the youth of the United States. However, it has become the fashion among certain of our better families in New York to send their boys to his school, to be taught to despise, practically, their own country.

    “Frank was sent to Saint Regis, and swallowed the un-patriotic microbes his tutor stuffed him with. After he left there, Yale, Harvard, or Princeton was not good enough for him. He must go to a foreign university. Which, it did not matter—Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg—anything but an American university. His guardians foolishly let him have his way. He took himself to Europe, ultimately settled in Paris, and practically forgot his own country, and became, as he calls himself: Francois Leroy Larchmont, a Franco American.

    “This would not probably have weakened his character altogether, for there are strong men in every country, though when a man becomes unpatriotic, he loses his manhood; but with Frank’s loss of Americanism, came the growth of a pride that is now, I am sorry to say, sometimes seen in our country—the pride of the ‘do nothing’; the feeling that business degrades. With that comes worship of title and an hereditary aristocracy, armorial bearings, and such Old World rubbish.”

    “Why! I—I thought you were one of that class!” ejaculates Miss Minturn, her eyes big with astonishment.

    “Oh! You think this is a curious diatribe from a man who has been called one of the Four Hundred, a good many of whom are devotees of this order,” Mr. Larchmont mutters, a grim smile coming over his features.

    “Yes, I—I thought you were a butterfly of fashion!” stammers the girl.

    “So I was—but of American fashion! Now I am a man who is trying to save his brother!”

    “From what?” asks Louise. “From being a French man?”

    “No, from losing his fortune and his honor!” remarks Harry so gloomily that the young lady looks at him in silence.

    Then he goes on: “My brother’s worship of title, his petty pride to be thought great in a foreign capital, got him into the Panama Canal, and the clutches of Baron Montez—God knows where he picked up the title. This man became my brother’s bosom friend, as he became, twenty odd years before, the bosom friend of the man whose letter I hold in my hand!”

    Press photograph (1906). See note.

    He taps the epistle of George Merritt Ripley, and continues: “This man was a strong man. He had to be killed perchance, to secure his treasure. My brother, being a weak one, needed only flattery and persuasion.” Then looking at the girl, Harry’s tones become persuasive; he says: “I am going to the Isthmus to try and save my brother’s fortune, and that of his ward, Miss Jessie Severn, out of which they have been swindled by this man, who probably ruined your chances in life, and made you struggle for livelihood in the workroom when you should have aired your beauty and graces in a ballroom. Will you aid me to force him to do justice to my brother? Your very position, thank God! will help you to do it!”

    But here surprise and shock come to him. His reference to Miss Severn has been unfortunate.

    Miss Minturn says slowly: “My position?—what do you mean?”

    “You will be the confidential correspondent of his firm. You will perhaps discover the traps by which Montez has purloined my brother’s fortune.”

    “Do you think,” cries the girl, “that I will use my confidential position against my employer?”

    “Why not, if he is a scoundrel?”

    “That is not my code. When I became a stenographer I was taught that the confidential nature of my position in honor forced upon me secrecy and silence!” And growing warm with her subject, Miss Minturn goes on, haughtiness in her voice, and disdain in her eye: “And you made my acquaintance—you tried to gain my friend ship, Mr. Larchmont—to ask me to do this?”

    “Good heavens! I never thought of it before these letters brought home this man’s villany to you, as well as to me!” gasps Harry “I was simply coming to the Isthmus to fight my brother’s battle, to win back for him, if possible, his fortune! To win back for Miss Severn, her fortune!”

    “And for that,” interjects the young lady, “you would make me do a dishonorable—yes, a series of dishonorable acts. You would lure me to act the part of Judas, day by day, to my employer, to bring to you each evening a record of each day’s confidences! How could you think I was base enough for this? How could you?”

    Then seizing the letters that have brought this quarrel upon them, and wiping indignant tears from her eyes, she whispers with pale lips: “Goodby, Mr. Larchmont!”

    “Goodby?”

    “Yes, goodby! I do not care to know a gentleman who thinks I could do what you have asked me!”

    She sweeps away from him to her own stateroom, where she bursts into tears; for, curiously enough, it is not entirely his hurried, perhaps thoughtless proposition, that makes her miserable, and has produced her paroxysm of wrath—it is the idea that he is fighting for Miss Severn’s fortune. “He loves her,” sobs the girl to her self, “and for that reason he would have made me his tool to give her wealth.”

    After she has left him, Mr. Larchmont utters a prolonged but melancholy whistle. Then he suddenly says: “Who can divine a woman? A man, thinking he had lost a fortune through this villain Montez, would have seized my hand, and become my comrade, to compel the scoundrel to do justice to us both! But she—” Then he meditates again, and says slowly: “I wonder—was there any woman’s reason for this? Her eyes—her beautiful eyes—had some subtle emotion in them that was not wholly indignation. They looked wounded—by something more than a business proposition!”

    Then a sudden pallor and fright come upon this young Ajax, as he falters to himself: “Great heavens! if she never forgives me!”

    Notes and References

    • player: A man or woman that has more than one person think that they are the only one. Urban Dictionary.
    • en camarade: in friendship. Cambridge Dictionary.
    • patois: a regional form of a language, especially of French, differing from the standard, literary form of the language.
    • Press photograph of male: Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947): Venezualan singer and under-appreciated composer, conductor and music critic. Hahn was a notable denizen of Belle Époque Paris, and friend and lover of Marcel Proust.

    ‘Books that shaped America 1850-1900’, U.S. Library of Congress.

    Phillips, A.A. -‘The Cultural Cringe’ Meanjin.

    Watkins, H.L. Four Years in Europe – The Barnum & Bailey Circus – The Greatest Show on Earth. 1901. Digital Collections, New York Public Library. Jump to book

    Worrall, H. , Exposing the fallacy of circus ‘showmen’.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 12. A Wildgoose Chase

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 12. A Wildgoose Chase

    The last thought of Louise Minturn regarding Harry Larchmont as the previous chapter closed: ‘Does he wish the real object of his journey to the Isthmus to be unsuspected and unknown?’ This is the ‘latter idea’ to which Gunter refers when opening this chapter. A fitting beginning as the narrative ahead is driven by the elements of intrigue and romance.

    At the present time our two lead characters are sequestered on the steamship Colon, traveling toward the port of Colon on the eastern side of the Isthmus, and thence by train to the Pacific coast of Panama. They are not alone, nor is it easy for them to be, though they are never far apart on the limited and segregated deck space. The SS Colon is one of the smaller ships of the Pacific Mail Line at 2,686 tons (Shipslist). It has an overall length of only 300 feet (91.4 m) and a beam of 40 feet (12.2 m) (Huntington). The majority of deck space is taken up by smoke stacks, masts, cabins, dining room, captain’s bridge, lifeboat storage and other nautical requirements. The most spacious and thinly populated area is the stern of the ship which is partly covered by an awning and, as might be expected, reserved for first-class passengers.

    Foredeck of steamer (1899). Photograph by Arnold Genther (loc.gov, ‘Travel views of Cuba and Guatemala’)

    Also on board and en route to Panama are Herr Wernig, a supplicating spy for Montez, and in second-class, Bastien Lefort, the frugal glovemaker of Paris, who readers may remember, has invested his entire fortune via Montez in the Canal undertaking. Space is at a premium and for Gunther it is a close set—fragments of conversation are wont to be overheard, associations noted, a dynamic of characters brought in close contact to interact.

    The reader knows more about Louise Mintern and Harry Larchmont than they do of each another. Apart from isolated revealing incidents, these two know little except that which appearance and reputation convey. Delight comes to the reader as this ignorance is corrected through romance, with wider expression of the various characters’ traits, deliberate misconceptions and unfounded suspicions largely activated by the two outliers Wernig and Lefort.

    Why should Louise and Harry get together? They come from two different classes, as defined by money—she is working class and he a self-confessed ‘do nothing’ rich boy. Because we want them to—their convergence, over self-doubt, against reason, across class and through barriers (or refuges) of formality, is the story. At one point, her working-class integrity under threat, Louise speaks her mind, repeating words she has uttered to herself in the previous chapter, and her little speech garners great respect, speaks well for her character, and nourishes the seeds of romance long sown. Polite jibing begins between our two lovebirds to reveal truth, and as always, love balances on the trust of one’s own feelings, undercut by conflict with reason.

    The journey is half over, though for Louise and Harry it has only just begun, and Gunter weaves some elemental, stunning and romantic descriptions of sea and sky as they look over the rail at night, the air suffused with sweet floral aromas of Cuba.

    Louise was astute enough during her employment negotiations to specify she travel first class, and this puts her on a level playing field with Harry. Given they both have socially-ennobled blood-lines, and she adequately fashionable dresses, their relative monetary worth seems a minor difference to overcome. Yet the starkest example of class distinction for the modern reader is beneath their feet. Out of sight, out of mind; and were it not for Herr Wernig’s derisive use of the term ‘steerage’, the reader would not be aware of the poor souls hidden and confined below decks at all.

    The expression “steerage” probably originates from the fact that the control lines of a sailing ship’s rudder ran on this level of the ship. An alternate theory supposes that the term derives from ‘cattle’, and that the passengers  traveled in the same space used for transporting livestock (Solem).

    Those in steerage are defined by not having a cabin (US Passenger Act 1882): everyone is lumped together communally. Conditions in steerage varied from ship to ship, however typically, instead of beds, berths are stacked against the walls, and either of wooden construction, or canvas, which can be collapsed during the day to make use of available space. Straw mattresses may be available or need to be purchased by the passenger prior to departure (Heaton). When dining, instead of selecting from a bill of fare meals prepared by a chef and served on fine china, food is doled out of pots onto metal plates. Seating is restricted, as is movement and fresh air.

    Conditions crossing the Atlantic were similar in 1884:

    And now I will refer to the victuals on which we had to subsist in the course of our journey. This was one of the worst of the discomforts we had to put up with. There was no scarcity, neither was there want of variety of food, but what we did get was hardly edible…. Our diets were three in number. Our breakfast on some days consisted of coffee, of its kind, being a decoction of some sort, sweetened with molasses, and a roll, the crusts of which were burned quite black, and the heart could have with impunity been used as a substitute for putty; at other times of porridge (the utmost care had to be exercised to keep all from running off the plates) with molasses to take the place of milk. Our dinner on some occasions was comprised of soup, salt beef (we only tasted anything like fresh meat once), and salt pork, with potatoes, which apparently had gone through a riddling process, and the smallest selected, and these, too, not of a very first-rate quality!

    The Shipwrecked Mariner: Quarterly Maritime Magazine, 1884

    The US Passengers Act of 1882 set new minimum standards for all passengers and particularly for those travelling in steerage. For example, 100 cubic feet (2.83 cm) was to be allocated for each adult, ceilings were to be at least six feet (1.82m), and berths were required to be six feet (1.82m) by two feet (0.6m), and the lowest no less than six inches (15.24cm) off the floor. Subtracting the area for berth from the allocation per individual equates to four square feet. The act also directs standards for ventilation (two foot-square ventilators per fifty individuals), food, water, provision of latrines (1 per 50 individuals of both sexes) and secure segregation according to sex and marital status among many other details, as well as specifying penalties for non-adherence.

    Reading the Act it is not difficult to imagine the conditions for steerage passengers that prevailed at the time. But none of this is Harry or Louise’s concern, for they are travelling first-class. Largely unhindered by class considerations, their budding romance struggles to reveal a new growth in their understanding of each other.

    CHAPTER 12

    A WILDGOOSE CHASE

    This latter idea, circumstances that occur later in the day tend to confirm. Mr. Larchmont, after having eaten a hearty and comfortable breakfast, is apparently not overburdened in mind by last night’s losses. Leaving the companionship of his social equals in the salon, he for some curious reason devotes himself to the second-cabin passengers.

    The privilege given him by his ticket permits his wandering all over the boat, and he avails himself of it by taking a long promenade in that portion of the ship where those who are compelled by financial considerations to take inferior accommodations make their exercise.

    His absence rather astonishes Miss Louise, who is dawdling out a tropical forenoon, seated on a steamer chair, under stern awnings, and surrounded by the light conversation of people talking to kill a nautical day, that is made up of three supreme events—breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with minor intervals between. Not greatly amused by the conversation of some of the young gentlemen of the boat, with whom she appears to be a general favorite, she meditates, and reproach comes to her. She has shut herself up in the cabin on the evening before, and has not enjoyed the moonlight, as Mr. Larchmont had suggested. Perchance, had she given him her society, he would not have turned to poker! This last thought is a spasm of delight too charming to be analyzed.

    Steamer off Nassau (n.a., c.1906, loc.gov)

    As she languishes amid fan and parasol and sofa cushions and surrounding gallants, her bright eyes suddenly become animated; to her astonishment she notes that Mr. Larchmont is interesting himself with the second-cabin passengers. He is taking his exercise in their company, and has become friendly with several of them.

    Apparently he does not love them well enough to eat with them, for he returns to first cabin at mealtimes.

    This is in Miss Minturn’s mind, as the young gentleman takes seat beside her at the lunch table, for she remarks caustically: “Mr. Larchmont, you do not seem to enjoy second-cabin table as much as you do second-cabin society.”

    “Oh,” he replies, stifling a grin: “there are some curious characters amidships;” then, after a little reflection, continues: “Besides, I am training myself for associations that may come ultimately to a poverty stricken individual.” This assertion is made with a laugh which does not seem to be genuine, from one prognosticating a fall in his social environment.

    But lunch over, this young gentleman is again at his business in the second cabin. He seems to have taken a particular fancy for a short, dried-up looking little man, whose dress and appearance proclaim the French shopkeeper.

    In the afternoon, a refreshing breeze having sprung up, most of the passengers take a leisurely promenade on deck; and Miss Minturn follows the fashion. She has some of the gentlemen of the ship at her side, among them Herr Wernig. A few scraps of conversation, that are carried by the breeze to them, from Mr. Larchmont and his second-cabin chum, appear to be in French; Harry apparently making very hard work of the Gallic vernacular.

    As the young lady only has ears for what floats to her from the forward part of the ship, her inattention is not complimentary to the gentlemen about her, and one by one they drop away from her, until she finds herself tête-à-tête with the German financier.

    This gentleman’s large bright eyes—one of which has a cast—have been often rolled towards her since she has made her appearance the day before; for he has a quick optic for feminine beauty, and the young lady’s exquisite figure, graceful movements, and vivacious countenance, have affected Herr Wernig in a manner that he would consider complimentary, but Miss Minturn would by no means approve. Therefore he has contented himself with admiring the bright face by his side, which is somewhat dreamy this afternoon, though the young lady’s inattention has not been flattering to a self-pride with which he is well provided.

    Finding himself alone with her, he breaks in upon her brown study with dominant manner, and slightly foreign accent, remarking: “Miss Minturn, your friend, young Mr. Larchmont, seems to be attempting to improve his French. If he learns French from Bastien Lefort, he will acquire the language of the bourgeois, not the aristocrat.”

    “Ah, you know the person Mr. Larchmont is talking to?” says the girl, suddenly growing interested.

    “Oh, yes, everyone on the Parisian Bourse knows him. He is a large investor in canal stock.”

    “And yet he takes passage in the second cabin,” returns Louise, astonished.

    “Yes, he is going to examine the works for himself,” replies Wernig, smiling sarcastically. “He is a man who saves his sous. My only surprise is, that he did not go in the steerage.” Then he shrugs his shoulders, and his large eyes roll themselves about in a manner he considers expressive of admiration, as this foreign gentleman suggests: “Why discuss others, Miss Minturn, when there are more charming people on board—much more charming—much more beautiful—and so—so delightful?” His eyes indicate quite pointedly to whom he refers.

    At this, the young lady gives a little start, and, a soupc̗on of scorn coming into her voice, replies: “Then you will be compelled to make your charming conversation—”

    “A what?” cries Herr Wernig enthusiastically.

    “A soliloquy!” suggests the girl sharply, and turning on her heel, gives him a very piquant but formal courtesy of adieu.

    Perhaps Mr. Larchmont has observed her conversation with Herr Wernig, for he shortly afterwards leaves his second-cabin chum, and coming aft, takes place beside her, as she is lazily looking over the taffrail. At all events he mentions it; for he asks, a trace of annoyance in his voice: “What do you find interesting, Miss Minturn, in that old foreign duffer?”

    “Ah, it is you, is it, Mr. Larchmont?” answers the young lady, turning a pair of beautiful but uncompromising eyes upon him; for she has been somewhat chagrined at the desertion of her companion of yesterday. Then she goes on quickly, “What old foreign duffer?”

    “The one you were walking with a few minutes ago—the man with big eyes, and a cast in the largest one.”

    “Oh, your friend,” murmurs Louise.

    “My friend?”

    “Yes, the one who knows your brother in Paris, so well.”

    At this, a shade comes over Mr. Larchmont’s face, as he murmurs: “Yes, he told me he was acquainted with Frank.”

    “Perhaps your chum of the second cabin is also a friend of your brother’s,” replies the piqued young lady, affecting an archness which does not seem to raise Mr. Larchmont’s spirits, for he replies with gloomy and morose tone and sneering voice, “You evidently don’t know my brother in Paris; he does not associate with second-cabin passengers.”

    Then, to turn the conversation, he attempts a cheerful and playful: “Where’s your guitar? This will be a night for guitars. This evening we will pass Cuba where guitars, mandolins, and dulcimers make music for the gay fandango. We should keep in the atmosphere. The guitar this evening, eh, Miss Minturn?”

    “No,” determinedly replies Louise, who likes not his bantering tone. “I shall write this evening.”

    Photograph by Arnold Genther, 1899 (loc.gov, ‘Travel views of Cuba and Guatemala’)

    Perhaps some subtle beauty in the girl—perhaps the natural buoyancy of youth—has caused Mr. Larchmont’s bad spirits to entirely disappear, as he returns lightly: “Ah, the diary! We have not seen that yet. I must enjoy that wonderful diary, even if I have to steal it!”

    “Never!” says the girl hoarsely, looking out over the horizon, the redness of confusion upon her cheeks, for she cannot meet his eyes whenever the diary is mentioned.

    “Why not?”

    Then Louise grows desperate, for he is smiling an awful smile. She mutters: “You shall never read that diary—never! I will throw it overboard first.”

    Here he surprises her; he whispers impulsively: “How anger becomes you!” As in truth, it does, for Louise Minturn is a girl whose spirit is even more beautiful than her face, and in excited moments her soul shining out through radiant eyes becomes wonderfully dominant over her delicate and mobile face.

    A moment after, Harry continues: “Yes, throw the diary overboard—do anything with it, but don’t write in it this lovely night.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because—” he hesitates slightly, then goes on with the audacity that is beloved by women; “because I want your company. You will take pity on me, and drive away the blues—won’t you? Promise me.”

    And the girl answers slowly: “Y-e-s.” For there is an appeal in Harry Larchmont’s dark eyes, and it is the first time he has ever asked a personal favor, though he has given her many.

    She turns away, murmuring: “Goodby!”

    “You are going?”

    “To be sure—to put my guitar in order.”

    “Then au revoir until dinner.”

    “Oh, I had forgotten dinner!”

    “What! Forgotten dinner?” laughs the gentleman. “Oh, guitars and mandolins! Here is a romantic soul!”

    Whereupon, covered by some sudden confusion, she hurries to her stateroom; and though she tunes her guitar, doubtless some of its chords are a little false, notwithstanding this young lady has a very correct musical ear.

    For some occult reason, she does not make her appearance at dinner, until the second course. Perhaps it is because she has lingered, arraying herself in a new gown of softest folds and most radiant whiteness.

    As she steps into the cabin, young Larchmont stops hastily in his fish, and mutters to himself: “Undine!”

    She does not hear this, for the skipper at the head of the table suddenly breaks out with a chuckle, continuing a conversation that Louise has broken in upon: “I had supposed, Harry, you were in charge of Miss Minturn here, while everybody tells me you have been making love to the second-cabin passengers.”

    “Miss Minturn, I believe, has discharged me, in favor of Herr Wernig, the Franco-German capitalist,” remarks Mr. Larchmont, as if disposed to put the brunt of the fight upon the young lady just taking her seat beside him.

    This suggestion of Herr Wernig makes the girl angry, and the captain’s remark does not add to her self-control. He returns: “Well, it seemed very natural that you and Miss Louise should become comrades. You dance the cotillon with her cousin in New York, and ‘birds of a feather flock together’!”

    Here the young lady interjects: “Yes, he dances with my cousin, Miss Minturn of Fifth Avenue, but she is very different from Miss Minturn the stenographer, of Seventeenth Street.” Then she says, unfalteringly: “Captain, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. I am not an exotic of fashionable New York. I am simply a young woman who makes her own living. This is not a pleasure trip to me. It is a matter of business. I am going out to be the stenographic correspondent of Montez, Aguilla et Cie.”

    At this a little hush comes about the table. The ladies glance at her, some with astonishment, some with careless indifference—one or two with surprised admiration, most of the gentlemen joining apparently in the latter.

    The captain suddenly says: “My dear young lady, I would rather have you sitting at my table than any Fifth Avenue girl I ever met. Harry”— here he looks at Mr. Larchmont—“seems to be of the same opinion. And I, as skipper of this vessel, would much sooner have him sitting by you on moonlight nights” (this last is a little whisper for her own particular ear) “than the German capitalist over there.” He nods towards the table where Herr Wernig is discussing his champagne with his third course.

    But this announcement, that the girl has perhaps carelessly but very candidly made, seems to produce a difference in several people, in their bearing towards her. Among the ladies, some who had been quite effusive to the supposed belle of fashionable Fifth Avenue grow distant, perhaps supercilious; a few, those of undoubted social position, are, if anything, kinder to her than before; one or two of them, in leaving the cabin, making it their business to stop and speak to Miss Minturn. The gentlemen seem about the same; to Mr. Larchmont, this announcement of course makes no difference, he has known it all along.

    As Louise rises from the table, he whispers: “Remember your promise. Cuban breezes, moonlight and music!”

    But this news about the beautiful American girl, which after a little time drifts to his ear, seems to make one gentleman unusually joyous, and to affect his spirits even more than the champagne, of which he is unusually lavish this evening.

    Sunset. Photograph by Arnold Genther, 1899 (loc.gov, ‘Travel views of Cuba and Guatemala’)

    This is Herr Wernig, the Franco-German capitalist; and very shortly after, getting on deck, he strolls to Miss Minturn’s side, his manner effusive, and his tone even more affable than it had been in the afternoon, and whispers, “My dear Miss Louise, I am delighted to hear you are a stenographer—the stenographer of my grand friend, the Baron Montez of Panama and Paris. It will be a very fine position for you. I have great influence with the firm. I shall try to advance you.”

    “Please do not trouble yourself on my behalf, in any way!” replies Louise; then laughs: “It would do no good. I am under contract. They will not raise my salary for a year.”

    “But I insist—I must—I will apply for you! I cannot help it, my dear young lady, I have much business with your firm—in fact, confidential relations—I’ll ask them, when on the Isthmus, to appoint you my stenographer.”

    Here Mr. Larchmont suddenly puts his camp-stool between Miss Louise and the German gentleman, to whom he whispers: “Herr Wernig, when you have any letter-writing to do, you come to me. I am corresponding clerk, also, of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company I am not as good a stenographer as Miss Minturn, but still I think I can do all the correspondence you wish—perhaps more.” The “more” is emphasized, as he happens to get the leg of his steamer-chair over the German’s toe, and seating himself on it, his one hundred and seventy-five pounds of athletic material makes Herr Wernig writhe.

    He snarls: “Sir, do you know to whom you are talking? You clerk! I will have you discharged from the Pacific Mail.”

    “You’ll have me discharged?” laughs Harry. Then a bantering tone coming into his voice, he says: “Oh, please don’t! For God’s sake, think of a young man left to starve on the Isthmus!” Next bursts into a sudden shriek of laughter, which indicates, if the worst comes to the worst, he has a stout heart, and will make out to subsist upon plantains, oranges, and bananas, that can be had for the plucking, in that land of tropical plenty.

    But his laugh is lost upon the German gentleman, who has gone sullenly and silently away.

    As he turns to Miss Minturn, Larchmont’s laugh ceases, for he sees something in the girl, that he has never seen before—her soul! And as it shines from her radiant eyes, it is more beautiful to him than all else he has seen of her, which up to this time has seemed to him the fairest of womanhood.

    Besides there is something in her glance that makes him extraordinarily but unaccountably happy.

    All through this evening, the young man seems to be in the highest spirits, as well he should be, having the beauty of the ship by his side.

    They are a little apart from the rest of the passengers—just enough to make them tête-à-tête—but hardly sufficient to excite remark. The moonlight, shining over silver waves, streams on the deck, and makes it bright, but leaves them in shadow. One red ray, like a gigantic calcium, mingling with the moonlight on the water, comes from the lighthouse on the eastern point of Cuba; a shore that looks olive beneath the moonlight, but under the sun would be green as an emerald, and beautiful with flowers, could they but see them, but the soft breeze wafts over the water, odors that are magic as those of fairyland.

    Looking on this, Harry Larchmont whispers to the young lady at his side: “Now give to this scene, music! Complete it, and let us forget all else in this wide world—except you and me.”

    There is a suggestion of romance in his tone, but beneath all there seems a sorrow, which arouses the sympathy of this girl, who, until these last few days, had supposed that Harry Larchmont’s life was as bright as that of any mortal upon this earth. While she sings a little romantic, plaintive, piquant Spanish love song, just fitted for this moonlight night, she wonders what cloud has come over him. Then, at his request, she sings another, and being made enthusiastic by the scene and its surroundings, gives her heart to the melody, and her beautiful contralto voice very shortly draws others of the loiterers on deck about her.

    Apparently this throng does not please Mr. Larchmont; he rises, and says: “Thank you for a perfect evening, Miss Louise,” and so passes away from the girl, though she notes that he does not go to the cardroom, but rather seeks his own cabin.

    Girl with Guitar (1886), William Merritt Chase

    Then the loungers around her beg for another ballad; and she sings it, but her heart is not in it.

    A moment after, she leaves them, notwithstanding their entreaties for more Spanish melodies, and passing to her own stateroom, sits and looks out over the moonlit water, breathes in the perfumed air, and dreams a dream that is so happy she would continue it, did not the stewardess come and put her light out, and destroy romance with common everyday shipboard rules and regulations.

    In her berth she gets to thinking, and murmurs to herself: “Poor fellow! What can have come into his life to make it sad?” Then awful distress comes upon her; she suddenly gasps, “He is parted from Miss Severn! That is the reason of his unhappiness!” and feels that her heart is drifting away from her, to a man whose love is given to another.

    As for this object of her sympathy, he is not dreaming—he is swearing. He is saying to himself: “Dolt! Idiot! Why did you make an enemy of that fellow Wernig? He might have helped you in your investigations about Baron Montez.” Then he suddenly mutters: “I am glad I did it, anyway! Did he suppose a beautiful American girl would look with anything but disgust at such a creature? What did he mean, anyway?” Here he suddenly grinds out between his teeth: “If I were quite sure, I’d knock his foreign head off!”

    A moment after, he meditates gloomily: “But I have other fish to fry than fighting Wernig. I am fighting Montez, not for Jessie’s sake, but for my own. I don’t want to give up two-thirds of my fortune to save my weak brother’s name and give his ward her dot. What can I find out on the Isthmus anyway? It is the last straw! I fear I am on a wild goose-chase. But the game is never lost till time is called, and I have got a few months yet!”

    Whereupon he lights a cigar, strolls out of his cabin, and would shatter a fond idea of Miss Minturn’s, did she see him; for he goes to the cardroom, and plays poker most of the night, to drive away thought; this time with better success than the night before.

    The fickle goddess smiles upon him, and he wins considerable money; some of it from Herr Wernig, who has apparently forgotten this young gentleman’s impertinence of the early evening, though once or twice there is an ominous look in his eccentric eye as he rolls it towards his fortunate opponent.

    Notes and References

    • sous: French term for `cash’, among other meanings.
    • soupc̗on: a little bit, a trace. ‘ in the 18th century, English speakers borrowed “soupçon” from the French, who were using the word to mean “drop,” “touch,” or “suspicion.” The Old French form of the word was “sospeçon,” which in turn comes from the Latin forms suspection- and suspectio. Mirriam- Webster Dictionary.
    • fandango: a lively Spanish or Spanish American dance in triple time, performed by a man and woman playing castanets.
    • occult: of or relating to magic, astrology, or any system claiming use or knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies. beyond the range of ordinary knowledge or understanding; mysterious. from Latin occultus (past participle of occulere “to hide from view, cover up”).
    • strabismus: a disorder of vision due to a deviation from normal orientation of one or both eyes so that both cannot be directed at the same object at the same time; squint; crossed eyes. Dictionary.com.
    • undine: any of a group of female water spirits described by Paracelsus.

    Heaton, Eliza Putnam ‘A Sham Immigrant’s Voyage in Steerage 1888‘ . CG Archives.

    ‘Maritime Notes: In the Steerage, Crossing the Atlantic’. The Shipwrecked Mariner: Quarterly Maritime Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 123, July 1884, pp. 189-192 `Maritime Notes: In the Steerage, Crossing the Atlantic”.

    Solem, Borge – ‘Steerage Passengers – Emigrants Between Decks‘. Norwayheritage.com

    SS Colon blueprint. The Huntington Digital Library.

    United States Passenger Act 1882. Glenvick-Gjonvik Archives.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 11. An Exile from The Four Hundred

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 11. An Exile from The Four Hundred

    Our narrator is back and quick to inform us that Miss Minturn has secluded herself in her stateroom in order to update her diary—as she has not been given the opportunity previously. In a slip of chronology this is imperative, in order to enlighten readers to events prior to departure, of which they have already read. However, throughout the chapter, the narrator remains primarily in touch with Miss Minturn’s point of view, and she is the key character in revealing the narrative, through speech, thoughts and what she hears and sees.

    Social class and what it means in this new society of the Americas is the theme throughout the chapter. Near the end of the chapter ‘the 400’ are mentioned, which to modern readers may be unfamiliar. The social matriarch for some time in New York was a Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. The term was coined by a loyal courtier, Ward McAllister, man-about-town as a social index: “Four Hundred”—a reference to the people who mattered in society, and the number of guests who could fit into Mrs. Astor’s ballroom. Caroline Schermerhorn came from a shipping family and married a grandson of fur trader John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America at the time (Broyles). This doyen of New York high society presided over what was previously known as the knickerbocracy. This term was derived from an 1908 novel by Washington Irving. Knickerbocker being the name of his facetious non-de-plume in a book that parodied the early Dutch settlers of New York (Morrow). For the social set that surrounded Mrs. Astor was not only about old money, but also critically old blood-lines.

    Cornelius ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt, shipping and railroad industry magnate, and his family were excluded. Alva Vanderbilt, the wife of William Vanderbilt, the Commodore’s grandson, decided that they should be part of ‘the 400’ and sought to bring the Vanderbilt family the social status they deserved (Morrow).

    Alva had a mansion built on Fifth Avenue, that surpassed the size of her neighbors’, then set about planning a costume ball for the opening. For the first time, the press were invited in to view and photograph the venue where the ball would take place. The third floor gymnasium was filled with palm trees and bougainvillea to resemble a jungle. Women of society spent months and considerable expense in having their costumes made. In short, having an invitation was the hottest ticket in town. Reportedly, Mrs. Astor’s daughter, Carrie had not received an invitation, although all her friends had, so she appealed to her mother to intervene. Mrs. Astor asked Alva Vanderbilt why her daughter had not received an invitation. To which Alva replied, that as Carrie had not visited the house, it would have been improper to have sent her an invitation. This then required Mrs. Astor to have her card left at the Vanderbilt house. This was the acknowledgement that Alva had been waiting for as it meant they had been recognized as part of the social fabric of New York. Carrie Astor and the rest of the Astor family received invitations the next day (Morrow).

    Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in jeweled gown and tiara, with peacock feather fan (Vogue, January 1917)

    The ball took place on 26th March, 1883. New York had never seen a social event of such size and opulence. Police held the crowds back as the more than eight hundred invitees dressed in the most wonderful and bizarre costumes that anyone had ever seen arrived. Taking inspiration from her nickname ‘Puss’, Miss Kate Strong’s costume consisted of a taxidermied cat on her head, and cat tails dangling from her skirts. The ‘Duchess of Burgundy’ was Miss Edith Fish’s choice with rubies, sapphires and emeralds adorning the front of her dress. Lila, Alva’s cousin went as a hornet with a spiked stinger adorning her head, encrusted with diamonds and other precious gems, while Alva’s own costume lit up due to batteries hidden in the dress. At eleven thirty the first of a series of quadrilles began, the most notable; the Dresden Quadrille where dancers all dressed in white took on the appearance of porcelain figures come to life (Broyles). At two a.m., guests selected their dinner, prepared by chefs from Delmonico’s and other Vanderbilt homes, and served by a corps of servants dressed in costume (NY Tribune) . The dancing continued until dawn. The estimated cost of the event was US$250,000 at the time, the equivalent of six million dollars today (Broyles).

    A journalist with the New York Sun took issue with the flagrant show of opulence on several levels:

    ‘Old, sober- minded men ask themselves whether it is advisable to make such a display of wealth and luxurious living when working classes are in a state of serious fermentation all over the world….The festivity represents nothing but the accumulation of immense masses of money by the few out of the labor of the many. … it was American only in its extravagance. In all the rest it was thoroughly foreign-in costumes, characters, fabrics, laces, dances, music, refreshments and everything else.’

    New York Sun 29/03/1883

    Louise Minturn has the education, the commonplace nous she is proud of, and some affinity with other members of the working class, but she also has a known blood-line attached to her name, and in this way she crosses the line between social classes. To some extent, everyday formality is relaxed on the steamer Colon; however, the perceived obstacle social caste places in the path of true love cannot be expunged from her thoughts.

    CHAPTER 11

    AN EXILE FROM THE FOUR HUNDRED

    For two days, on the plea of seasickness, a vague bashfulness keeps this young lady in retirement, in spite of kind messages from the captain, brought by the stewardess, suggesting it will be well for her to get her “sea legs” in working condition, and that his table looks lonely at dinnertime: for the skipper, being an admirer of lovely women, has given her this post of honor, somewhat to the young lady’s astonishment. Not being seasick—for the weather is by no means tempestuous—she has devoted herself to writing up her diary, which has fallen behindhand in the two or three days previous to her departure from New York.

    On the morning of the third clay, the stewardess, opening Louise’s stateroom door, with that young lady’s coffee in her hands, says, in her goodhearted darky way: “Miss Minturn, Cap’en’s compliments, an’ hopes to see yo’ at breakfus’.”

    Then getting no answer to this but a piquant yawn, for the young lady is sleepy, she runs on in her patois:

    “’Deed it ’ud be a pow’ful shame if yo’ don’ go, honey. De vessel ain’t rockin’ mo’ dan a baby’s cradle. Dis am reg’lar Bahama wedder.”

    “Can I wear a light dress?” the girl asks suddenly and rather anxiously, reflecting, in a sleepy way, that her new summer gowns are her strongest points in wardrobe: and desirous, like other Eves, to make a good appearance on her first entry into the dining salon.

    “Laws! Yo’ could wear angel’s wings, yo’ could, today, an’ be comfo’table!” returns the stewardess.

    “Oh!” cries Louise, laughing. “I have no wish for a celestial toilette. Nun’s veiling will make me near enough to the angels at present.”

    Soon after, stepping upon the deck, a vision of summer loveliness, she feels sorry that she has confined herself to her stateroom so long. The vessel is ploughing her way through a sea that is strangely blue, and quiet as the waters of an inland lake, save for its long ocean swell. The sky above her is also azure, and the glorious sun makes the bracing sea breezes a little languid, as they toss the girl’s hair about, and give undulation to skirts and draperies that outline as pretty a figure as ever stood upon a ship’s deck. She draws in the salt air, which is just strong enough to give buoyancy to her step and roses to her cheeks, and is happy that she has left New York with its March winds behind her, and sailed into a sunny sea.

    Everything is tropical.

    She looks about, an indefinite bashfulness in her radiant eyes, as if she hoped, yet almost feared, to see someone, and notices the passengers are nearly all in the toilettes of midsummer: the gentlemen mostly sporting white linen suits or flannels: the ladies in light yachting costumes, with dainty sailor hats, or other delicate dresses suggestive of the tropics.

    The gong is sounding for breakfast. Miss Louise, with a little disappointed pout upon her lips, for some how she has not seen what she has been looking for, is about to go a little diffidently into the dining salon. But at the companionway a cheery voice greets her. The captain is at her side, saying pleasantly—for this old sea dog has a quick eye for pretty girls—“I hope you have got a saltwater appetite, Miss Minturn. Delighted to see you on deck. I was afraid you might make the voyage ‘between blankets.’”

    “In such beautiful weather that would have been horrible,” replies the young lady.

    “If you had not come out today, I was going to send our sawbones to see what was the matter with you,” returns the captain.

    “Oh!” says the young lady, withdrawing her hand from his vigorous and hearty grasp, for the skipper has been giving its taper fingers a cordial squeeze, “I never take doctor’s prescriptions.”

    “Neither do I!” laughs the seaman: “so come down and take some of our cook’s.”

    A moment after, they are at the breakfast table, the waiter placing a chair for Miss Louise at the left hand of the captain, as the latter introduces his pretty charge to the people immediately about him. During these presentations, the young lady discovers that the chair at the captain’s right is occupied by the wife of a French engineer connected with the Panama Canal Company. She is going to join her husband on the Isthmus, and is very petite, rather timid in her manner, and delighted when she learns that her new acquaintance speaks French.

    Immediately beyond this lady is an American, Colonel Clengham Cleggett by name. He is in some way connected with the American Commission for the Panama Canal, and is at present enthusiastically praising the French management of that gigantic enterprise, probably because he receives therefrom a handsome salary. A little farther down the table is a very pretty American girl going by way of the Isthmus to meet her fiancé, who is an orange farmer in Los Angeles, California, where she is to be married to him. Her name at present is Miss Madeline Stockwell.

    These things come to Miss Minturn in a dreamy manner. With change of latitude, the atmosphere seems to have changed also. Though the flag of the United States floats over her, she is apparently no longer in America.

    Everything about her is so foreign!

    The conversation at the next table, coming from several young Central Americans returning to their coffee plantations, is Spanish. The balance is almost entirely French. There is but one subject of remark—the Panama Canal. For nearly all of the passengers are connected with it, and get their bread and butter out of it, being employees of the Canal Company, of the various contracting firms engaged in constructing it, returning from leave of absence to their duties on the Isthmus.

    The only exceptions to this, besides those mentioned, are a couple of English Chilians bound for Valparaiso, and a representative of Grace & Company, going to Lima. Therefore the name of le grand Franc̗ais, Ferdinand de Lesseps, and his colossal enterprise, is on everybody’s lips.

    But even as these things come to her, the young lady’s pretty hazel eyes are looking diffidently, yet anxiously, about her. She is wondering where Mr. Larchmont sits in the dining salon. She rather hopes it is far from her; next suddenly wishes the reverse. Even as this thought is in her mind, a great blush comes over her beautiful face, she turns her head away for a moment, confused, for Harry Larchmont, coming down in summer flannels, takes the vacant seat next to her. Looking at the beauty beside him, he gives a start of surprised pleasure, and ejaculates: “I was afraid you were overboard!”

    The captain says: “Harry” (for this young man’s easy going way has made him familiar with nearly everybody on shipboard), “let me introduce you to Miss Minturn. She is the derelict of the ship. You should know her. She is one of your set in New York.”

    To this peculiar information, Mr. Larchmont says with the instinctive good breeding of a man of the world: “Yes, I know Miss Minturn very well, I am happy to say.”

    “Of course you do!” laughs the captain. “She danced at the Patriarchs’ ball with you the other evening.”

    “No, you are referring to my first cousin, Miss Fanny Minturn,” ejaculates Miss Louise, suddenly finding her tongue, and not wishing to sail under false colors.

    “Miss Fanny Minturn is your cousin?” says Mr. Larchmont, a look of surprise passing over his face, for which the young lady does not bless him, for into her quick mind has flown this thought: “Why should this gentleman be astonished at Miss Minturn of Fifth Avenue being the cousin of Miss Minturn the stenographer?” As she thinks this, chagrin makes her its prey. She imagines the captain’s politeness and seat at his table came because he had supposed her one of the elect of New York. Fortunately for her peace of mind, she soon discovers that she does this jovial, goodhearted sea dog injustice, as he don’t care anything for Fifth Avenue. All he cares for is pretty girls: and Miss Minturn’s face and figure having pleased him, he has given her a seat at his table, and will favor her with personal attentions during the voyage, that he would hardly give to an ugly countess.

    As the look of annoyance leaves her face, the conversation becomes more general, though ever and anon, during its commonplaces, the pretty young lady seated at Harry Larchmont’s side, catches his eyes upon her, and she interprets their glances to say: “What the dickens brings you here?”

    Perhaps her piquant face asks the same question, for after a little he suggests: “This meeting is unexpected to you, Miss Minturn: you now discover what I meant by au revoir at Delmonicos.”

    “Why—I—I had supposed you were bound for Paris,” says Louise.

    “No. My brother goes to France with Miss Severn and Mrs. Dewitt,” answers Larchmont, looking serious.

    “Then you are en route California, I imagine?” asks the girl a little anxiously.

    “Only as far as the Isthmus.” The young gentleman does not look very happy as he says this, and astonished meditation comes over the young lady. This bird of fashion might run away from winter in New York to the orange groves of California, or to gay St. Augustine, or the Riviera, or even Egypt: but why should Harry Larchmont make a pilgrimage to Colon and Panama, with their swamps, miasmas, and yellow fever? She is sure of one thing—that it is not for pleasure. She recollects that he sighed when he said, at Delmonico’s, it might be the last time he would lead the cotillon.

    He affords no solution to the problem, though he gives the young lady several pretty commonplaces, and the conversation at the table runs along in a desultory way: but it is a conversation that delights the girl who is listening to it. She perceives the narrow limits of Miss Work’s typewriting room have opened, and let her pass out into the world of finance, of politics, of diplomacy—the little world that dominates the greater one. As she thinks this, the girl’s eyes grow bright with excitement at the new life that is coming to her.

    Across the table from her a discussion is taking place as to whether the United States will interfere in case the rights of the few remaining American stockholders of the Panama Railroad are ignored by the Panama Canal Company that has purchased it. Colonel Clenghorn Cleggett is apparently the most bitter Gaul in the discussion, and is verbally trampling on his own countrymen with savage vehemence.

    “Rather an unAmerican chap,” remarks Mr. Larchmont sotto voce to Miss Minturn. “According to his own stories, Cleggett was a Congressman, and yelled Monroe doctrine until he received a French appointment.”

    “Then he is a mercenary traitor,” says the young lady, with the quick decision of youth and womanhood, in a whisper that brings her pretty lips very close to Mr. Harry’s ear, for their seats at table permit easy confidence.

    A moment after, she suddenly goes on, “How much you know about the Canal!”

    “I’ve been making a quiet study of it lately,” answers the young man, and rather gloomily attacks his breakfast.

    Then silence comes over Mr. Larchmont. Having come in late to breakfast he is apparently making up for lost time, so the young lady could keep her ears open and her mouth shut, did not the captain’s occasional attentions compel reply.

    He insists on her tasting the various dishes he recommends: and knowing the strong points of his cook, she discovers she has fared very well by the time the skipper rises to leave the table. The young man beside her is just finishing the last of his coffee hurriedly, and is apparently about to address her, when the captain, offering a gallant arm, says: “Let me show you my ship, Miss Minturn”: and with that seizes upon Miss Beauty, and takes her up the companionway, to instruct her in various nautical matters.

    After a few minutes, the captain’s attention is demanded by his first officer, and Harry chancing to saunter out from the smoking room, the seaman turns his charge over to him, saying: “My boy, complete my instructions. Miss Louise now knows the difference between a top mast and the smokestack.”

    Then going away to his duty, he leaves the two facing each other.

    Couple on Deckchairs (1904) Joseph Christian Leyendecker

    The gentleman looks pleased and eager. The lady’s eyes turn to the water, as it flows past, a slight blush on her fair cheeks, a little confusion in her eyes. She is thinking of the blizzard and—the violets.

    Mr. Larchmont says laughingly: “Miss Minturn, since you have been under the captain’s instructions, will you please educate me?”

    So they shortly find themselves seated in two steamer chairs which the young gentleman, for some occult reason, has placed very close to each other.

    “What a languid sea breeze!” murmurs the girl, making an alluring picture of laziness as she dallies with her white parasol.

    “Not as languid as the blizzard,” laughs Harry.

    Whereupon the young lady turns on him grateful eyes, and whispers: “You were very kind to me!” then looks over the water.

    “Ah! you like me in the rôle of rescuer?” returns the gentleman, suggestion in his voice.

    “On shore, perhaps: but here your remark indicates collision, hurricane, shipwreck, and ‘Man the life boats!’” replies Louise, growing a little pale at her own imagery. Then she suddenly ejaculates, “What a pretty little ship!”

    “By Jove!” cries Larchmont, hastily producing his field glasses, and inspecting the pennants of an exquisite schooner that is just abreast of them, with every white sail set to the southern breeze.

    “Why, she looks like a toy compared to our steamer!” remarks the young lady: and noting the gentleman inspecting her signals, continues: “You appear to know the boat.”

    “Yes, that is the Independent, Lloyd Pollock’s schooner yacht,” answers Harry. “Pollock is bound for the West indies, for a winter cruise. He is one of the most charming ‘do-nothings’ in the world. He spends his life seeking summer.” Then he sighs, “Two months ago I was a ‘do-nothing’ also.” This last remark is perhaps produced by the sight of the steward serving cocktails on the yacht’s deck.

    “Well, why not join him?” suggests Louise. “Mr. Pollock is a friend of yours?”

    “Yes, an intimate.”

    “Then hail him. He is hardly too distant, even now. Ask him to take you on board,” continues the girl, who is a little piqued at her companion’s sigh. “Your trip to the Isthmus does not please you.”

    “I am better pleased to be here than on board any yacht in the world,” answers young Larchmont stoutly; and looking upon his companion concludes that he has spoken the truth. Then a new idea seems to come into his mind, for he goes on suddenly: “You are journeying to California, Miss Minturn?”

    Schooner Yacht ‘America’ (c. 1890-1920), John Fraser

    “No,” says the girl, “what makes you think that?” and turns wondering eyes on him.

    “Why,” he answers, a little hesitation in his manner, “I had heard a young lady on board was en route to California to be married. When I saw you at the captain’s table alone, and in his charge, I presumed you were the fiancée.”

    “I am not going to California, and I am not going to be married!” utters Louise decidedly. “That young lady”—she indicates by her parasol Miss Madeline Stockwell, who is seated by the side of a young Costa Rican—“is the coming bride.” Smiles are upon her fair face, for she is glad to find Harry Larchmont has been speculating upon her. She laughs, “Could you not tell it? I thought brides could always be guessed.”

    To this the young man replies: “If brides could be guessed by tremendous flirtations, I should have selected Miss Madeline Stockwell. How do you think her fiancé would enjoy looking on that?” and he points to the Costa Rican, who is stroking his moustaches with one white hand, and with the other devotedly fanning the pretty Madeline, as she sits languidly on her campstool, a picture of contented ease, apparently having forgotten the orange grower.

    Then the two become merry, for somehow Mr. Larchmont’s face, when Miss Louise had announced to him she is not the coming bride, has given that young lady good spirits. So they go to joking with each other, and have quite a merry time of it, until Harry brings catastrophe upon their tête-à-tête.

    He says incidentally: “By the by, Miss Minturn, you remember that gentleman who was with you at Delmonico’s the other evening?”

    “Oh, yes!” she replies carelessly. “Mr. Alfred Tompkins: he came down to bid me goodby.”

    “Then it was he!” ejaculates Harry, a peculiar look coming into his face. “He is a very curious man.”

    “Indeed! Why?”

    “Why, he ran to the end of the dock just as we cast loose, and shook his fist at the ship, and called out, ‘You infernal scoundrel!’ For a moment I wondered if he was not anathematizing me: but a French gentleman standing beside me took it to himself, and crushed your friend with a volley of Gallic invective. Consequently, I know he did not refer to me.”

    There is meditation, yet questioning, in his voice: perhaps there is a little roguery in his glance: for the young lady has turned suddenly away, and a big blush has come upon her. She knows the reason of Mr. Tompkins’ violence, and in her heart of hearts is gasping: “Good heavens! he thought I was eloping with—if Harry Larchmont should ever guess!”

    A moment later, the gentleman startles Miss Louise again. He says: “You are not a good sailor, I am sorry to see.”

    “Why?”

    “Because every little lurch of the vessel seems to make you wish to look over the taffrail. Besides, you were sea sick in your cabin for three days.”

    “No, I was not!” replies the girl indignantly. “I—I had some writing to do.”

    “Ah, then you are a good sailor. You like yachting, of course?” This is said as if everybody yachted: and Louise bites her lip, and hates him for making her confess ignorance of that fashionable amusement. Then great joy comes to her. She remembers the catboat Tompkins hired in summer, and called a yacht. She had been on it once at Sheepshead Bay, with Sally Broughton, and putting her soul in her words, she answers sweetly: “I adore yachting!”

    Then she grows very angry again, for he has glanced at her surprised.

    A moment after, he goes on, unheeding indignant looks: “If you adore yachting, and I love yachting, suppose we imagine this ship a yacht: we have yachting weather.”

    ” What difference,” says Miss Minturn petulantly, “does it make whether we consider are on a steamer or a yacht?”

    “Only that on yachts people get better acquainted with each other. There is something in the very deck of a yacht that makes people feel épris.”

    “We will consider this a steamer,” mutters the girl piquantly yet sternly.

    Her glance disconcerts the young man: but he says: “You play, I know.”

    “Passably.”

    “On the piano?”

    “Yes, on the piano, the guitar, banjo, and harp. My mother was a music teacher.”

    “The guitar—you have one with you?”

    “It is in my stateroom.”

    “Then we will have musical nights on deck: dancing waves—romantic moonlight—the——”

    Harry’s eyes are speaking as well as his lips, when Miss Minturn cuts him short with, “My evenings are devoted to writing.”

    “Oh, letters for home?”

    “No, my diary.” As this slips between the young lady’s pretty lips, she clinches her teeth together, as if trying to cut it off, and grows very red, for he is whispering: “A diary! a young lady’s diary! I am devoted to such literature. Give me a peep at yours?”

    “Oh, gracious!” ejaculates the girl, for sudden thought has come to her: “If he should see it with his name on every other page!” Very red, but desperately calm, she goes on: “That diary is under lock and key, and shall remain there. No one will ever see it.”

    “Not even your husband—when you marry?” suggests the gentleman.

    “He less than anyone!”

    “Of course not! The diary would be very sad reading for the future husband,” answers Harry, putting pathos in his voice. Then he says consideringly: “I am glad, however, it is a diary. Diaries can be left till tomorrow. I was afraid it was some of that awful stenographic work: that I might hear the click of the typewriter in your stateroom.”

    “Typewriters,” cries Louise, “are for the Isthmus.”

    “For the Isthmus?”

    “Yes. Don’t you suppose there is any business done on the Isthmus?” answers Miss Minturn, with savage voice: thoughts of typewriters do not charm her soul this pleasant morning. “Is the Panama Canal all talk and no work?”

    Now this latter announcement seems to have a very potent effect on the gentleman with her. He mutters: “I am afraid so.” Then continues: “I am going to the Isthmus myself, on business—business on which——”

    Here Louise eagerly interjects, delight in her voice: “So am I! I am going out to be the stenographic correspondent of Montez, Aguilla et Cie.”

    At these words Harry Larchmont starts, looks at his companion with sudden scrutiny, perhaps even suspicion. A moment after, apparently changing the tone of his speech, he says, with an attempt at a laugh: “So am I.”

    “What! Stenographer for Montez, Aguilla et Cie.?”

    “No, not exactly that, but I am going to be a clerk also.”

    “You a clerk? You, who have led cotillons? You, who are one of the lazy birds of the world?” gasps the girl, astounded.

    “That is a thing of the past, now,” he says contemplatively. “You see,” here a sudden idea flies into this gentleman’s mind, and he becomes apparently confidential, “when a man in the class I have been running with discovers, to put it pointedly, that he is ‘dead broke’.”

    “Dead broke?”

    “That’s what I said. He finds very few avenues of employment open to him that are sufficiently lazy to suit his disposition.”

    He makes the last pictorial, by reclining very languidly on his steamer chair, and murmurs, “You look happy at my news.”

    “Happy?—I—” stammers the girl. “Of course not!” But her eyes belie her words, for there has flown into her soul a rapturous thought: “This man and I are now equal in this world’s goods.” After a moment she goes on suggestively:

    “Why, you might go on the stage, with your voice and figure.”

    “Thanks for your compliment!” he laughs. Then, growing serious, says: “On the stage! Every dramatic jackal of the press would have run me down in their columns as coyotes do a buffalo that has left his herd. Besides, do you think a man becomes an actor without study? And I have never studied anything.”

    “Why, you must have studied something—football for instance!” laughs Louise. Then she says, her eyes growing large with admiration: “I saw your wonderful game four years ago.”

    “Yes,” he replies, “I am an athlete, but not a prize fighter: prize fighting leads to the stage, not general athletics. Consequently,” he goes on, as if anxious to stop discussion on this point, “I applied to my uncle, Mr. Delafield, who has some influence in business circles, and he has obtained for me a clerkship in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s office at Panama. I think it will suit me. They only have three steamers a month: between times I can lie in a hammock, smoke cigarettes, eat oranges, and suck mangoes.”

    “Yes, I think it would suit you,” says the girl mockingly: and looking at him, acquiesces with him, but does not believe him. His speech seems to her not genuine. Up to the time she had told him she was the correspondent for Montez, Aguilla et Cie., his conversation had been frank and ingenuous: from that time on, it has appeared to be forced.

    A moment later the captain breaks in on her meditation, saying: “Harry, I think we’ll have to change watch now. It’s my turn below.”

    And Mr. Larchmont, to whom this conversation has grown embarrassing, for he is not a young man to use ambiguities easily, and tell white lies with the straightest of faces, but who feels it necessary to disguise the reason of his visit to the Isthmus to anyone connected with Baron Fernando Montez, yields up his seat, and strolls off to meditate over a cigar.

    Then the captain attempts to make play with the beauty of the ship, but finding her unresponsive to his nautical wit and humor, suggests lunch: for she is thinking, “If it is true? If he is a clerk—there is no gulf—Harry Sturgis Larchmont and I are equal before the world!” And it is joy to her, for this girl loves the man, not his reputed wealth or social position.

    So the day runs on, and Louise gets to watching this young man who has been so much in her thoughts, and what she notices makes her wonder still more.

    There is a certain Carl Wernig, a gentleman who the captain tells her is of prodigious wealth and great influence in the Panama Canal Company. This person seems to be interested in the movements of Mr. Larchmont. The two having picked up a hurricane deck acquaintance, Miss Minturn hears him mention to Mr. Larchmont that he knows his brother Francois in Paris.

    “I call him Frank,” says the New Yorker rather curtly. “An American name is good enough for me, though I believe my brother has Frenchified his since he has been promenading the boulevards.”

    But nothing seems to check this German in his interest in Mr. Larchmont. He joins him, at every opportunity, on deck, laughingly questions him as to his trip on the Isthmus, as if anxious to know what he intends doing there. To these Herr Wernig receives the short answer that Harry is “busted,” and is going out as a clerk to Panama.

    The next morning, Miss Louise, who has spent some part of her night meditating upon the gentleman of her thoughts, gets a surprise when she comes on deck and stands by the captain’s side, looking at the Island of Salvador, with its white lighthouse.

    The skipper says suddenly: “By Jove!”

    “Why do you make such extraordinary remarks?” asks the young lady, a little startled at the bluntness of the seaman’s exclamation.

    “Why, look at that young springall, Harry Larchmont, sauntering along the deck as unconcernedly as if it were an everyday occurrence: and yet I understand Mr. Cockatoo lost one thousand dollars at poker last night! Those young bloods think the skipper does not know what is going on in this ship, but the skipper does.”

    To this Louise does not reply. A curious problem is in her mind. She is wondering how a man, who yesterday told her he was “dead broke,” seems not even to give a passing thought to the loss at cards of one thousand dollars that will be “hard-earned dollars” to him very soon.

    As she goes down to breakfast she thinks: “Can it be the carelessness of financial despair, or is it from force of habit?”

    She had known Larchmont was regarded as rich, even in New York, where a million dollars goes not over far. Is this exile from the Four Hundred, though he has not gone on the stage, acting some part? Does he wish the real object of his journey to the Isthmus to be unsuspected and unknown?

    Notes and References

    • patois: (French) a rural or provincial form of speech.
    • sawbones: a surgeon or physician
    • sotto voce: (French) soft voice
    • rôle: 1600–10; <French rôleroll (as of paper) containing the actor’s part
    • taffrail: a rail above the stern of a ship
    • catboat: a boat having one mast set well forward with a single large sail
    • épris: (French) love
    • springall: a diminutive of “Spring,” as in a nickname for a “lively young man.” http://www.houseofnames.com

    Broyles, S. ,’Vanderbilt Ball—how a costume ball changed New York elite society‘. Blog, Museum of the City of New York.

    Morrow, A., ‘New York’s Other Monicker‘, Historynet.

    ‘Vanderbilt Ball’ – New York Sun 29/03/1883. NY City blog, PDF.

    ‘Vanderbilt Ball’—New York Tribune 27/03/1883. PDF.

    ‘The Four Hundred‘—edwardianpromenade.com

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour