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Tag: A.C. Gunter

  • 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

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 10. A Chance Meeting At Delmonico’s

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 10. A Chance Meeting At Delmonico’s

    Chance is the key word, and those readers who have been following the story will quickly relate to the proverb ‘two times lucky, three times a charm’. If Harry’s uncle hadn’t required a stenographer and collapsed mid-sentence, if in the course of the Great White Hurricane, Louise had not gone to work, and Harry had not been riding about in near impassable streets, if Tompkins, trying to impress Louise, hadn’t taken their party to . . .

    Delmonico’s Restaurant, the first fine dining restaurant in The United States, opened in 1837. The first eating establishment to be called ‘restaurant’ and the first to use tablecloths, it was also the first to offer facilities for a ball or gala event outside a private residence. The third floor consisted of private dining rooms where, as Delmonico’s puts it, ‘discriminate entertaining was the order of the day.’ The basement held over a thousand bottles of wine. Dishes such as Eggs Benedict, Lobster Newburg and Bombe Alaska were created in this restaurant, which became world-renowned. In 1868, Delmonico’s was the first in New York City to serve women unescorted by men, hosting The Sorosis Club, the first professional women’s club in the U.S.(Delmonico). Gunter provides an effective sensory description of the noisy and hectic atmosphere on the dining floor of the busy restaurant in 1888.

    Prior to dinner, Louise’s friend Sally throws a bit of a hissy fit that they are not going to see a play, ‘Fauntleroy‘, which is ending its run. Tompkins, Louise’s partner for the night, is taking them to the Paragon theatre instead, though what they see doesn’t deserve comment. Some of Gunter’s readership may have been aware of the significance of mentioning the play at this time (late March, 1888), but to the modern reader it is something in the order of an insider joke.

    It sets the preparative theme of ‘what might have been’ for the majority of the chapter to accentuate resolution at the end. We have: Alfred Tompkins’ aspirations and hopes for Louise Minturn, and Louise’s reflections on Harry Larchmont, Sally’s regrets over her station in life and Mr. Jenkins anger at his loss of preferred regard in Sally’s eyes.

    The curious thing is, Gunter knows that if a play called Little Lord Fauntleroy were playing in New York at that time then it would have to have been an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, the plagiarized version written by the British playwright E.V. Seebohm. This unauthorised play opened in London on 23rd February, 1888, but never appeared in New York, as Burnett took legal action to prevent it.

    Elsie Leslie as Little Lord Fauntleroy in the Broadway Theatre Production (1888)

    Burnett’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy was tremendously successful, both in its original serialization in St. Nicholas Magazine from November 1885 to October 1886, then as a book by Scribner’s (the publisher of St. Nicholas) in 1886. The main character, modeled upon her son Vivian, was not only a bestseller, but also became an influence in children’s fashion: velvet suits, lace collars, even chocolates were merchandised (McCarthy). Burnett and her husband and children were in Florence when she heard about Seebohm’s play, a comedy, in which great slabs of her novel had been used (Nierman). As reprinted in the New York Times of 4th March, 1888, a London Truth article titled ‘Mr. Seebohm’s Literary Morality’ describes dramatically how Seebohm used the attention Burnett’s story had attracted:

    . . . he seizes upon it, dramatizes it, advertises it, uses for his play the title of Mrs. Burnett’s story, trades on the reputation of it, and then, when the authoress informs him that it is her story, that she invented it, and that she herself has dramatized it, and is anxious to produce it on the stage, Mr. Seebohm tells her that she has no grievance! Why! Because says Mr. Seebohm, the play is mine not yours; because I have widely departed from the original, and because, if it does succeed, I don’t mind giving you a bit! Mr. Seebohm impudently declares that no man could have behaved more honorably. That opinion will be scarcely be shared by the public, who consider that, be the law what it may, the authoress of the charming story has been very unfairly and shabbily treated.

    New York Times, March 1888

    Burnett discovered that copyright laws did not extend to plays. She took the matter to court, and on May 12th, won a landmark court decision on property rights to a work of fiction. This forced Mr. Seebohm’s play off the boards. The Society of British Authors was so moved that she was presented with a diamond ring and bracelet (Nierman), and bracketed with James Russell Lowell, sturdy defender of international copyright laws, as guest of honor at a banquet in Queen’s Hall (Mc Carthy). Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy opened on December 3rd, 1888 in the Broadway Theatre, New York and closed on May 11th, 1889.

    As a playwright and author, Gunter could not have failed to be aware of these events as they directly impacted on concerns that his own works be protected. Gunter uses artistic licence, mentioning ‘Fauntleroy’ nine months before it opens, to add momentary colour to the night outing, and to press home the point through Tompkins’ budget off-Broadway choice, and Sally’s complaint that there is an economic class ceiling under which they survive. Louise’s later comments on their male companion’s attire bear this out. But also, naming the play perhaps represents a subtle nod of thanks to his fellow writer, Frances Hodgson Burnett.

    CHAPTER 10

    A CHANCE MEETING AT DELMONICO’S

    As I enter from my unsuccessful promenade, Sally’s sweet lips give me a kiss, and Sally’s laughing voice says: “Well, Miss Lazy, I beat you home after all!”

    Then, as if sudden suspicion has come to her, she cries: “Did you meet him?”

    “Him—who?” I gasp, as a startled blush comes upon me.

    “Why, Mr. Tompkins, of course!”

    “Mr. Tompkins?” I reply icily, “Do you suppose I would go out walking with Mr. Tompkins?”

    “Oh, you didn’t think I meant Alfred! Who did you suppose I meant? Is—is there someone else? Those violets! Are you keeping a secret from me?” and Sally’s bright eyes are gazing into mine with sudden and embarrassing inquiry.

    Whatever have been my wild thoughts about this gentleman of clubs and cotillons and fashion, I have made no confidant of my chum, nor anyone else—nor ever shall!

    To turn the conversation from this dangerous ground, I suggest: “Come! Help me pack my trunk, as you promised to.”

    “Not till tomorrow,” answers my volatile companion. “You must keep your best dress out for tonight.”

    “Tonight—why?”

    “Tonight Mr. Tompkins and Mr. Jenkins have requested the pleasure of escorting us to the theatre.”

    “The theatre! I have too much to do.”

    “Nonsense! Your trunk isn’t such a very large one. I’ll help you tomorrow. Besides, you’ll spoil our party. I can’t go out with two gentlemen. This will be your last chance to do me a great favor.”

    As she says this, Sally’s blue eyes are fixed in entreaty upon mine. The thought of parting from her makes me pliable to cajoling. “Very well!” I assent.

    “Ah! I thought I could persuade you, and have already arranged the party,” says Miss Broughton, who is even now in her best bib and tucker, and looks very well in it—her bib being a handsome fur-trimmed jacket; and her tucker, a pretty and modest fawn-colored cloth dress, that drapes her rather under-sized, but plump figure, with graceful folds.

    “This will make him happy,” she continues thoughtfully. “He comes to take us to dinner—”

    “He—who?”

    “Mr. Tompkins, of course! It is to be at the Dairy Kitchen, where they have music. We will have a jolly time! But goodness, hurry! I hear his step upon the stairs, and you are not yet in festive array!”

    Thus adjured, I retire to our bedroom, and in fifteen minutes come out to meet Mr. Tompkins, who is talking to Sally, as she puts on her hat. As I enter, their conversation floats to me.

    “She is so deuced haughty!” says the gentleman.

    “Haughty? How absurd! She’s affability itself,” returns the young lady.

    “Yes, to girls!” answers Mr. Tompkins snappishly. Then he turns and sees me. My efforts at personal adornment seem to be pleasing to him, for I catch a stifled “By Jove!” as he regards me, and Sally gives a little cry, partly of surprise, partly—I am vain enough to think—of admiration; for before my glass, a sudden thought had flown into my mind. “Perhaps at the theatre I may meet him!” And I had drawn upon the utmost limits of my wardrobe, to make myself as alluring as possible, with, I think, very good effect.

    Perchance this accounts for Mr. Tompkins’ more than usually effusive manner, as he greets me with, “Hew are yer?” and then murmurs: “This is exquisite, Miss Louise. I take it as a personal compliment!”

    “I never compliment anybody!” I reply icily.

    Then I grow red a little, for it has suddenly struck me I have been complimenting Mr. Harry Larchmont. My blushes seem to please Mr. Tompkins. He shows a rapture in his face which embarrasses me. A moment after, he suggests: “You have something on your mind?” For I have got to thinking of Panama, and have placed my latchkey on the table, instead of putting it in my pocket.

    “Yes,” I reply, “there is something on my mind. I am going—”

    A biting pinch from Sally’s quick fingers makes me pause—half in astonishment, half in pain.

    A second after, getting opportunity as we put the finishing touches to our toilettes in the little bedroom, she whispers: “Don’t tell him now.”

    “Why not?” I ejaculate.

    “Because you’ll spoil our theatre party. I can’t explain now; but don’t tell either of the gentlemen till we get home. Promise!”

    “Certainly. It is a matter of indifference to me whether Mr. Tompkins or Mr. Jenkins ever know of my departure!” I answer.

    So we rejoin our escort, who is a florid little fellow, not much over five feet seven, with a quick, dapper walk. He wears the conventional evening dress of the day, embellished by a heavy gold chain across his vest, that does not seem to me to be exactly the mode. At all events, Mr. Larchmont never wears one.

    A moment after, we are under way for the Dairy Kitchen, a gorgeous restaurant on Fourteenth Street, that accommodates the well-to-do hundred thousand, and furnishes them with a very fair dinner at a reasonable price, accompanied by the music of an indifferent orchestra, and the discordant sounds of half a hundred waiters, who clash their dishes together with vivacious activity.

    Under its brilliant arc-lights we meet Mr. Jenkins, one of the floorwalkers of Pacy & Company, who says in a loud voice, that is suggestive to me of “Cash!”: “I have kept this table for you for twenty minutes, and am hungry.”

    “Then you must wear your dress coat in the store. I don’t think you ever get away till at least a quarter after six, at Pacy’s,” sneers the haughty Alfred Tompkins.

    Mr. Jenkins, crushed by this business sarcasm, regards us in gloomy and hungry silence, as we take seats at his table, and Mr. Tompkins suggests: “Have you ordered the menu, Horace?”

    “No! What’s that?” asks Jenkins suddenly, at which I stifle incipient laughter, and Miss Broughton suggests with playful sarcasm: “Perhaps he thought it was the oysters!”

    At Sally’s badinage Mr. Jenkins grows so savage, that I turn the conversation, by hastily asking: “To what theatre are you going to take us?”

    After giving the necessary orders for our entertainment, Mr. Tompkins condescends to furnish me the information I ask. “I have procured tickets,” he says, “for the Paragon.”

    “The Paragon!” Sally screams in horror. “Why do you always take us to the Paragon? Now if it had been Fauntleroy, that I have been dying to see for six months, that would have been something like. Couldn’t you do it now? It is getting near the end of its run.”

    Here Mr. Jenkins candidly remarks: “Fauntleroy tickets are not on the bargain counter yet.”

    At this soft insinuation Mr. Tompkins hems and blushes.

    The theatres that Mr. Tompkins patronizes, are always those that have on their boards either unsuccessful pieces, or plays that have been performed so long that, their first flush of glory being over, the management are liberal with complimentary tickets. His position as floorwalker in a leading dry-goods establishment gives him rather a command of these tributes of managerial favor, for he has been quite successful, in his day; in making full houses for them; and several times the employees of his house have attended some of our leading theatres almost in a body, giving them the appearance of great prosperity and crowded houses. To “first nights” Mr. Tompkins seldom invites any one. In fact, he says he does not like them. He prefers a play to grow mellow and old, and to receive the polish of one hundred and fifty performances, before he visits it. At the Paragon, however, he sometimes invites people to “first nights,” though at the box office it is always said:” “We are sold up to Q.”

     Consequently it is the Paragon to which Mr. Tompkins is going to take us this evening.

    At his announcement, my heart sinks; for I am very certain Harry Sturgis Larchmont will not be in its orchestra chairs or boxes: and a half hysterical regret, for which I anathematize myself, comes into my mind. “Perhaps I will not see him before I go.”

    Noting my preoccupied manner, Mr. Tompkins in his most dulcet tones suggests: “Is the something on your mind, that Miss Sally spoke of, destroying your appetite?” Then he whispers, a Romeo timbre in his voice: “Is it about me—Alfredo?”

    At this I give a start. The romantic tone of the gentleman—Sally’s hint not to tell him of my departure. A sudden suspicion comes into my mind, that makes me very icy and haughty to Mr. Tompkins.

    A few minutes after, we all stroll over to Broadway to take car to visit the Paragon, a little theatre where they sometimes have very good plays, but rarely full houses.

    The performance this evening is a pleasant one, and the party leave the theatre in very good spirits, except me.

    We walk over to Fifth Avenue, and turn down this great thoroughfare, crowded with rushing cabs and carriages coming from the theatres. During our walk Mr. Tompkins announces to us that he has had a great stroke of business luck; that he has been promoted to a higher department, with a better salary. He has apparently kept this piece of news to impress either Mr. Jenkins, Sally or myself.

    Delmonico’s, Beaver and Williams Streets, opposite the Cotton Exchange (1893)

    As we approach Twenty-sixth Street, this gentleman’s good fortune seems to have made him financially reckless. He suddenly says: “What do you say, young ladies, to supper at Del’s?”

    “Supper at Del’s!” ejaculates Sally in unbelief.

    “Certainly.”

    “Catch me!” gasps Miss Broughton and pretends to be overcome. But Tompkins repeats sternly: “I mean it! A supper at Del’s!”

    This is too good a chance for Jenkins to refuse. He answers, “Right you are!” and promptly leads the way.

    For a moment I am about to draw back. An awning is up on Twenty-sixth Street; a cotillon, or dinner dance, or Patriarchs’ ball, or something of that kind is going on in the ballroom upstairs. It is quite probable that Harry Sturgis Larchmont may be there. I may meet him in the restaurant or the hall, and I shrink from this fashionable gentleman encountering me under the escort of the florid Tompkins.

    But Sally pulls at my arm, whispering: “A supper at Delmonico’s! It is the chance of your life!”

    Hesitation would be absurd. I know she will try and drag me in if I do not go, and I follow them.

    Looking on our party as we pass in, I am content with Miss Broughton and myself, though the gentlemen do not impress me “as to the manner born” to the glories of this fashionable restaurant. Sally’s dress is certainly very nice. My own I know is all right. Besides, the hall boy, as he takes and checks our wraps, is politeness and humility itself. The haughty head waiter, however, impresses me more strongly, as he precedes us, remarking: “Table pour quatre!”

    Our escorts’ clothes, however, do not impose upon me. True, they both wear swallowtail coats, but their fashion is not of the latest mode; and their vests are not of the white duck I see some of the gentlemen at the neighboring tables wearing. Besides that, both of them have three horribly big exaggerated studs in their shirt fronts.

    I am delighted when they sit down and hide their watch guards from view; for this atmosphere is one to disclose slight defects in the dress of either man or woman.

    The room is a blaze of electric light. The toilettes of the ladies, some of whom are in graceful and beautiful evening gowns, having just come in from the opera, are nearly all magnificent; the dress suits of the gentlemen, perfect in detail.

    “This time we have a menu,” remarks Mr. Tompkins proudly, and shows it to Mr. Jenkins, as the waiter places it in front of him.

    A moment after, he surreptitiously passes the carte du jour to me, muttering: “Confound it! It is printed in French. Won’t you assist me, Miss Louise?” my knowledge of that language being known to him.

    Supper after the Opera at Delmonico’s, New York, engraving by Albert Edward Sterner (1898)

    “I’ll save you the trouble,” laughs Sally. “The other side of the card is in English.”

    Then Mr. Tompkins, his face covered with embarrassment, orders oysters, some cold partridges, ice-cream, and a bottle of champagne; and thoughtlessly being lured into unknown fields of extravagance by the waiter’s suggestion, adds terrapin to his bill of fare, and we have a very pleasant meal of it.

    My ears, however, are devoted to the conversation at the table next us. The people there are giving me information that interests me. One of the ladies remarks carelessly: “Mrs. Dewitt, I hear, goes to Europe on Saturday. I believe she chaperons Miss Severn.”

    “Of course Mr. Larchmont goes with his ward,” is the reply of a gentleman.

    “Oh, certainly; they leave on the Aurania. They say Mr. Larchmont is interested in pretty Miss Jessie much more personally, than as trustee of her estate, and guardian of her person.”

    I catch no more of this conversation, as the party giving it to my ears now rise and leave the restaurant.

    Soon we are going also, Mr. Tompkins looking sorrowfully at his bill. As we reach the hall, the incident comes to me that I have dreaded, yet hoped for. I again see Harry Larchmont’s pleasant face.

    He is talking to a gentleman standing near the office.

    His friend says: “You lead the cotillon with Miss Severn, I understand, tonight?”

    “’Yes, for the last time—perhaps.” This with a little sigh.

    “Why the last time?”

    “I am going away.”

    This confirms the news I have just heard of him from the party in the restaurant.

    A moment later, his glance catches mine. The hall boy is about to hand me my wrap.

    In a second he stands beside me, with outstretched hand, which I do not refuse, and says:”How do you do, Miss Minturn? No after effects from the blizzard?”

    “No,” I reply, “only gratitude.”

    But the blizzard has left an after effect on me. I turn my head away, my cheeks are burning.

    “Nonsense!” he replies lightly. “Don’t think of the affair in that serious way. I regard it now—only with pleasure.”

    “What! When you slept on a counter that night,” I return.

    As this is going on, he is cloaking me with that deft ease which indicates the squire of dames, while Mr. Tompkins, who has hurried to my side to proffer a similar attention, stands glaring at this unknown swell who is acting as my cavalier for the moment.

    A second later, Mr. Larchmont whispers: “I am most happy to have seen you before I go away.”

    “Oh, I am going away also!” I reply.

    “Indeed! Where?”

    “On the Colon—”

    He interrupts this with a little start, saying: “On the Colon? Then I shall only say au revoir,” bows, rejoins his friend, and the two go upstairs, from which the sound of music tells us of the coming dance; while I look on his departing figure, wondering what he means.

    During this, Sally has been gazing at me with very large eyes; and as we pass out, is questioning eagerly: “Isn’t he very handsome? Who is he?”

    I reply, attempting nonchalance: “Mr. Harry Sturgis Larchmont.”

    This announcement is received by unbelieving sneers from both Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Tompkins, who have read many times of Mr. Larchmont in the society columns of their morning newspapers.

    “What!” screams Sally, careless of overhearing cabmen, “the leader of cotillons? the howling swell?”

    “I don’t know about the howling swell,” I reply, “but I believe he leads the cotillon this evening.”

    “Good heavens! Why did you not introduce me?” This is a sigh of unutterable reproach at lost opportunity; then Sally goes on impetuously: “I would so like to know a real swell before I die!”

    At this uncomplimentary speech, Jenkins grinds his teeth, as he walks by her side, and Mr. Tompkins grows pale, for he fears I have told the truth.

    So we go home, they all questioning me, “How did I know him?”

    This Sally answers for me. She says proudly: “He is a relic of her former life. You know that Louise is Miss Minturn—one of the real Minturns. You can read of her cousins, aunts, and uncles every day, in the society columns of the papers. They are dancing now, perhaps, with Mr. Harry Sturgis Larchmont.”

    At this suggestion comes the thought that he is dancing now with Miss Jessie Severn, and the idea which has been in my mind so often, comes up with renewed force. Had not misfortune befallen my mother’s parents on the Isthmus, I might have been dancing the German with him, in her place, and this makes me severe—severe with poor Tompkins, from whose remarks I turn with disdain.

    By this time we are at our home in Seventeenth Street. Mr. Jenkins leaves us at the door, apparently not having forgiven Miss Sally for her remark about a real swell.

    A moment after, Mr. Tompkins bids us adieu, and turns to follow him.

    I am about to bid him goodby as well as goodnight and tell him of my intended departure; but Sally whispers to me: “He will know tomorrow.” Then as the young man disappears she archly says: “Yes, he is sure to turn up tomorrow. He turns up every day. Perhaps Mr. Tompkins will sleep better tonight if he does not hear the news until tomorrow.”

    “Don’t talk nonsense!” I return, as we run up together to our rooms. In the parlor, Miss Broughton, who has been in high spirits all the evening, suddenly changes her mood.

    She looks at me wistfully, and says: “Louie, only one night more together after this!”

    Then we two lonely ones in this world gaze at each other, and our eyes grow dim; and after we have gone to bed I hear dear little Sally sobbing, until sleep comes to us both and gives us rest.

    The next morning Miss Broughton has apparently regained her spirits. She whispers: “You will write to me often, and if you don’t like it there, come back.”

    “I have a contract.”

    “Come back, contract or no contract. They can’t chain you there. With sixty dollars a week you can save money to pay your own passage.”

    “And you!” I say anxiously. “What are you going to do?”

    “Oh, I’m all right!” she runs on. “I have got Laura Dutton to come and take your place. She won’t be such pleasant company, but is of a motherly disposition, and I think will keep me in good order.”

    So, breakfast being over, I am compelled to go to the office of Flandreau & Co., to sign the contract, and complete my arrangements for departure.

    There I meet the dapper little clerk again, who is very polite to me, and has the contract drawn up, to be signed in duplicate, by which I bind myself for one year to furnish my stenographic services to the firm of Montez Aguilla et Cie., contractors construction, Panama, for the sum of sixty dollars per week and the various other emoluments that had been agreed to between us.

    These documents are in printed forms in Spanish, apparently being in general use by the Panama firm to cover their agreements for labor.

    Somehow or other, the name of the firm—Montez Aguilla et Cie., seems to me familiar.

    These contracts I take to Miss Work, who has advised to this effect, and she gets a young lawyer in a neighboring office to see if they are what I wish. I translate them to him, and this gentleman pronounces them, in his judgment, satisfactory. I put my name to them, and returning to the office in South Street, they are signed by Flandreau & Co. as agents for the firm with which I contract.

    My ticket for Panama, for a first class passage, is given me, and I am informed that the captain of the steamer Colon will take charge of me as far as the Atlantic side of the Isthmus. There Mr. Stuart, the agent of the Pacific Steamship Company at Colon, will see about my railroad ticket, and transfer me across the Isthmus. I am given letters of introduction to both these gentlemen, and sufficient money in hand for any reasonable expenses that may come to me upon the voyage.

    All this has been done by one o’clock in the day, and I depart for our rooms up town, I purchasing on the way a little souvenir de remembrance for Sally. Miss Broughton is waiting for me, for she has given up her day’s work to pack my trunk and see the last of me. This packing does not take long. My wardrobe, though good, is not extensive; but I have purchased a few light and I think pretty gowns, suitable for a warm climate. So together we soon make quick work of the trunk. But this very packing brings the past back to me.

    Among the mementos left me by my dead mother are a few things she had received from her own. One is a picture of a beautiful lady in the dress of thirty years ago. It is a tintype, bearing on the back: “Edouart’s Gallery, Ambrotypes and Daguerreotypes, 634 Washington Street, San Francisco.” There is also a package of letters my mother had received as a schoolgirl, from her parents in California. These I have looked over before. Some time on the Isthmus I will read them again.

    Perhaps I may learn the fate of the writers at Panama. Perhaps I may regain the treasure that was lost with them. Perhaps I may be—Pshaw! Nonsense! Their fate came on them thirty years ago.

    We have had our dinner, and eight o’clock comes, and with it Mr. Tompkins. The trunk is now out in the parlor, strapped and labelled.

    This trunk seems to give Mr. Tompkins a sensation. Almost as he wishes me good-evening, it catches his eye. He says hurriedly: “You are going away?”

    “Yes, tomorrow.”

    “And where do you think she is going?” interjects Sally.

    “To Long Island,” suggests Mr. Tompkins uncertainly.

    “To Panama for a year—under contract at sixty dollars a week—and first class passage there and back!” cries Miss Broughton.

    “To Panama!” gasps the gentleman. “Impossible!”

    “Look at that trunk! Read its label!” returns Sally.

    “Miss Louise Ripley Minturn, Panama, via steamship Colon.”

    Reading this, Mr. Tompkins believes, and sinks down, overcome, upon our little sofa. But only for a moment. Then conviction has such an awful effect upon him, that Sally and I stare at his emotion.

    He rises, an inch added to his height, a desperate determination in his face, and cries: “Put that trunk away! Unpack it at once! I forbid you to go!”

    His manner is so extraordinary, and there is such a wild light in his eyes, that Miss Broughton, having raised the Romeo in him, runs away from it into the other room, with a stifled giggle.

    This is perhaps fortunate, as Mr. Tompkins’ emotions have suddenly become of a most embarrassingly ardent nature to me. At last I realize why Sally has prevented any knowledge of my departure reaching the romantic Tompkins before. He is given to the emotions in their most violent and dramatic form.

    Looking at me he mutters in reproachful tones: “And you kept it from me?” then again cries out in a desperate way: “But I will not let you leave!”

    However, I steady myself and say determinedly: “That is impossible! I have signed a contract.”

    “I want you to sign a contract with me!” he returns, an awful romantic significance in his voice, “a contract to be my wife.”

    He is coming towards me. In another moment his arm will be about my waist. With a gasp of consternation, I place the trunk between us.

    From the other side of it he still addresses me. “Yesterday I was made very happy. My salary was raised. It is sufficient to support a wife. Tell me, Miss Minturn—Louise, that you will enjoy that salary with me!” He reaches to seize my hand, but three feet of trunk prevent him.

    “I am glad to hear of your business success, Mr. Tompkins,” I reply, trying to stifle any emotion that may be in me.

    “Your Alfred’s success!” he cries. “Call me Alfred!” and steps to my side of the trunk, but I, with a deft spring, keep it between us.

    “Will you marry me?” he asks in eager tone.

    “No!” I answer desperately, for his hand has caught my arm, and there are kisses in his eyes, “No! Never!”

    Then comes an awful scene. He reproaches me for having made him love me—me, who had hardly given him a thought—who had not even cared enough about him to guess what Sally’s insinuations had meant.

    Finally he exclaims: “I know it now; you love another!” and grinds his teeth.

    “Another?” gasp I. “I forbid you to continue!”

    “Why not?” he cries. “Why not? Didn’t your eyes tell me your hideous secret last night at Delmonico’s when you looked at the swell? Harry Sturgis Larchmont, that’s his name! What chance have we workingmen against these gentlemen of fashion? But, frivolous girl, I warn you of him! With my last word, I, Alfred Tompkins, warn you!”

    With this invective he departs.

    I pray God he will be happy. True hearts are scarce in this world, and though Alfred Tompkins’ love for me is perhaps not of the most exalted type, still he has given me the whole of it.

    Then Sally comes out to me and whispers: “You have sent him away?”

    “Of course!”

    “I knew you would, ever since you looked, last evening, at the swell in Delmonico’s. Why, what awful blushes! but they’re very becoming, Louise.”

    “Nonsense!” I cry. “Don’t dare to speak such ineffable idiocy. No more of Mr. Tompkins!”

    “No more of Mr. Harry Sturgis Larchmont?”

    “No more of anyone!” and I turn from the subject, though Sally brings it back to me several times upon this last evening we spend together. The last night of our friendship! If I come back, I will be changed, and she—Any way it will be different!

    SS Colon, leaving Colon

    But at present we are all in all to each other, and mingle our farewells with tears and caresses, and promises to never forget each other.

    So the morning comes to us, and my trunk is taken away by the expressman, and Sally and I go down to the great steamship, at its dock in the North River. I present my letter of introduction to the captain, and find that I have a very pleasant stateroom, all to myself. Here Sally and I bid each other farewell. A moment after, I give a start.

    Alfred Tompkins is standing before me. He says, heedless of Sally’s presence: “Whether you change your mind or not, I have come down to bid you good by!”

    And I whisper to him: “I can’t change my mind! You will forget me in time.”

    Then the cry comes up of “All ashore!”—the cry that is separating me from the land of my birth. And Sally and Mr. Tompkins have gone across the gangplank to wave adieu to me as the steamer leaves its dock.

    Other farewells are being said. Husbands are parting from wives, and sisters from brothers, and a lot of fashionables are waving farewell to some gentleman comrade. Carelessly I turn to look at him.

    I give a gasp of astonishment. What does it mean to my life? The man waving an adieu to his friends, and standing carelessly on the bulwarks of the ship—the man sailing away with me to Panama—is Harry Sturgis Larchmont.

    Sally and Tompkins have seen and recognized him too. I see it by the look of amazed alarm upon their faces. Good heavens, if they think it an elopement! I give a start of horror, and fly to my stateroom dismayed and overcome at emotions that give me curious joy and bashful fear.

    Notes and References

    • tucker: a piece of linen, muslin, or the like, worn by women about the neck and shoulders.
    • emoluments: profit, salary, or fees from office or employment; compensation for services
    • swell: a person who is very fashionably dressed, a man of high social or political standing.
    • terrapin: a term formerly used to refer to any aquatic turtle but now restricted largely, though not exclusively, to the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) of the turtle family Emydidae. (britannica.com)

    James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), poetryfoundation.org

    Little Lord Fauntleroy, Internet Broadway Database.

    Mccarthy, Tom, ‘The Real Lord Fauntleroy’, American Heritage Magazine.

    Nierman, Judith, ‘Piracy Inspires “Real” Stage Version of Children’s Classic’, copyright.gov, PDF

    Shattock, Joanne, ed. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Volume 4, 1800–1900. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 1475.

    Turner, Stephanie. ‘Delmonico’s Goes Through 200K Pounds of Beef Every Year‘, New York Eater.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 9. The Angel of the Blizzard

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 9. The Angel of the Blizzard

    Louise Minturn continues to read past entries in her diary, specifically those of nine days previous, detailing her second encounter with Harry Larchmont. As in the first three chapters Gunter uses an historical event on a particular day to background action. At midnight March 11th, a storm known as the Great Blizzard of 1888, or the White Hurricane, descended on New York City. Being within the living memory of his contemporary readership it adds authenticity to the story. No one who lived through the storm would ever forget it.

    For the first time the metropolis experienced the effects of an oscillation in the polar vortex, which sent a blast of cold air across frozen Canada to meet with a mass of warm air travelling up from the Gulf of Mexico. The previous day had been a moderate 50°F (10°C) with rain in keeping with the close approach of Spring, thus the inhabitants of the city were totally unprepared for what confronted them on the twelfth. Torrential rain had turned to heavy snow, the temperature plunged below zero, snowdrifts reached the second storey of buildings, an estimated 500,000 pounds of horse manure and 60,000 gallons of horse urine froze and along with broken glass and other trash were whipped across the city by 100 mph winds (Mikolay).

    After the New York Blizzard. New Street, looking toward Wall Street, 1888 (NY Public Library)

    Telegraph, telephone and powerlines came down isolating New York from the rest of the country and live wires buried in the snowdrifts provided a deadly hazard in the streets. Drivers finding the streets impassable unhitched their horses and deserted their carriages, wagons and cars where they stood. Overturned carriages buried in snowdrifts became a feature of the city. Consequently, there were no dairy, bakery, meat or newspaper deliveries upon which the population relied. The elevated rail system froze, trapping thirteen hundred early workers in transit (New York Times).

    Mark Twain was trapped in his hotel room while waiting for his wife, Olivia, and sent her a letter (how it was delivered in the conditions is a mystery):

    A mere simple request to you to stay at home would have been entirely sufficient; but no, that is not big enough, picturesque enough—a blizzard’s the idea; pour down all the snow in stock, turn loose all the winds, bring a whole continent to a stand-still: that is Providence’s idea of the correct way to trump a person’s trick.

    qtd. Clara Clemens, daughter of Mark Twain

    As a result of the blizzard two hundred people died in New York City alone (Schulten). The blizzard was an event of great moment not only because of its ferocity and transfixing power, but because it physically resolved arguments for the future development of the city. As early as the thirteenth of March a New York Times journalist reporting on the effects of the storm stated:

    Probably if it had not been for the blizzard the people of this city might have gone on for an indefinite time enduring the nuisance of electric wires dangling from poles; of slow trains running on trestlework, and slower cars drawn by horses and making the streets dangerous with their centre-bearing rails. Now, two things are tolerably certain—that a system of really rapid transit which cannot be made inoperative by storms must be straightway devised and as speedily as possible constructed, and that all the electrical wires- telegraph, telephone, fire alarms, and illumination—must be put underground without any delay

    New York Times March 13, 1888

    In the same article we see the strange beast of American Exceptionalism raise its head in lamentation:

    …the most amazing thing to the residents of this great city must be the ease with which the elements were able to overcome the boasted triumph of civilization, particularly in those respects which philosophers and statesmen have contended permanently marked our civilization and distinguished it from the civilizations of the old world—our superior means of intercommunication.

    New York Times March 13, 1888

    Louise has already ‘broken the ice’ with Harry Larchmont, indirectly through the desperate state of an old man. For the two to meet again in a population of one and a quarter million other chilly New York souls could only be due to the hand of fate. In this chapter, Gunter was perhaps inspired by an actual rescue that occurred during the storm and reported in the New York Times six months later as ‘Romance of the Blizzard’: George Cozine of Hicksville, Long Island was trudging through the snow when he heard the cries of a woman. Buried beneath the snow he discovered Miss Mary McEwen. Finding that her hands, feet and ears were frozen, he dragged her from the snow and throwing her over his back carried her home. `From that time on, he was a welcome guest, and an intimacy sprang up between him and Miss McEwen that terminated in their marriage on Saturday’ (New York Times Sept. 11, 1888). You read correctly, ‘terminated’.

    As the proverb goes ,‘’tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good’ and in Louise’s case, despite being someone normally possessed of good sense, her foolhardy actions inevitably place her necessarily in deadly peril.

    CHAPTER 9

    THE ANGEL OF THE BLIZZARD

    Two days after, I received a brief note from Mr. Larchmont, which simply stated he was taking care of his uncle’s minor matters of business, during that gentleman’s recovery, and enclosed to me a check for my services as stenographer, the amount of which, though liberal, was not sufficient to make me think it anything more than a simple business transaction.

    Then one week afterwards came the blizzard, that crushed New York with snowflakes, that stopped the elevated railways, and blocked all transportation by surface cars; that confined people in their houses on the great thoroughfares, as completely as if they had been a hundred miles away from other habitations. That dear delightful, fearful blizzard, in which I nearly died.

    On Monday morning, March 12th, I am awakened by Miss Broughton, who is peeping out through the casements. She crys: “’Louise, wake up! This is the greatest storm I have ever seen.”

    “Nonsense! It’s spring now,” I answer sleepily.

    Zeffy in Bed (1906), Lilian Westcott Hale

    “Yes, March spring!—cold spring! Jump out of bed and see if it’s a spring atmosphere,” returns Sally, with a Castanet accompaniment from her white teeth.

    I obey her, and the spring atmosphere arouses me to immediate and vigorous action. In a rush I start the gas stove, and, throwing on a wrap, walk to Sally’s side, and take a look at what is going on in the street.

    “Isn’t it a storm!” suggests Miss Broughton enthusiastically. “A beautiful storm! A storm that will stop work. A storm that will give me a lazy day at home!”

    “You are not going down to the office?” I say.

    “Through those snow banks?” she replies, pointing to six feet of white drift on the opposite side of the street, in which a newsboy has buried himself three times, in an unsuccessful attempt to deliver newspapers at the basement door.

    “Certainly,” I reply.

    “Impossible!” she says. “You will make a nice, lazy day of it, at home with me. We will do plain sewing. You shall help me make my new dress.” Sally always claims me on lazy days. In my idle moments, I think I have constructed four or five costumes for her. This time I rebel.

    “If you are not going to work, I am!” I say decidedly.

    “Through those drifts?”

    “Certainly!” I reflect that I have some documents Miss Work has promised this day. They are legal ones, and admit of no postponement.

    “Well, you may be able to get to the office,” says Sally, “if you are a Norwegian on snowshoes, or an angel on wings.”

    This angel idea is a suggestion to me. “The elevated is running!” I answer, and point to the Third Avenue, down which a train is slowly forcing its way. The station is only a short distance from me. I will take the elevated. Surface cars may be blocked, but the elevated goes through the air.

    Miss Broughton does not reply to this, though I presume she has her doubts about the feasibility of my plan, for the storm is coming thicker and heavier.

    But breakfast over, she steps to the window, looks out, and says disappointedly: “Yes, the Third Avenue trains are still running. I presume you can go, but how about getting back again this evening?”

    “Pshaw!” I reply, “it will be all finished in an hour.”

    North on Third Ave between 67th and 68th streets after the Blizzard of 1888 (New York Public Library)

    A few minutes afterwards, well equipped for Arctic travelling, I, with a desperate effort, get out of the door, and for a moment am blown away by the wind. I had no idea the storm was so severe. But I struggle on, and finally reach the Third Avenue station, to climb up its icy stairs and be nearly blown from them in my ascent to the platform. From this, I finally struggle on board a downtown train, which contains very few people. The guards have lost their usual peremptory tones. They do not cry out in their bullying manner, “All aboard! Step on lively!” as they are prone to do on finer days, but are trying to get warm over the steam pipes in the car. The blizzard has even crushed them!

    We roll off on our journey, amid gusts of wind that nearly blow us off the track, and flurries of snow that make it impossible to see out of the windows. In about quadruple the usual time, however, we creep alongside the City Hall station platform.

    It is now half-past nine. I alight, and am practically blown down the stairs, though a snowdrift at the bottom receives me, and makes my fall a soft one. Then I fight my way along Park Place and into Nassau Street. The storm seems to get stronger and fiercer, as I grow more and more feeble. Midway I would turn back, but back is now as great a distance as forward; and one end of the journey means the comfortless railway station, where perchance no trains are leaving now. The other terminus is Miss Work’s office, where there will certainly be a fire, company, and occupation. By the time I shall be ready to go home, the storm must be over.

    So I struggle on, and fight my way through snowdrifts, to finally arrive, in an almost exhausted condition, at 1351/2 Nassau Street.

    A long climb up the stairs, for the building is not provided with an elevator, and I find myself on the top floor, which is occupied by Miss Work’s establishment. Here, to my astonishment, the door is still locked. Having a pass key, I discover a moment after entering, to my consternation, an empty room, and a cold one. Miss Work, who is punctuality itself, is not here. I reflect, she will undoubtedly arrive in a few minutes. She must come.

    While thinking this, for the atmosphere does not permit of delay, I am hurriedly making a fire in the grate, which has not been attended to overnight, the man in charge of the building apparently not having visited it this morning. Fortunately there is plenty of fuel, and I soon have a roaring fire and comfort.

    Then I move my typewriter where I get the full benefit of the cheery blaze, and sit down to my work.

    Time flies. No one comes. Having nothing to eat, I pass what should be my lunch hour over the keyboard of my Remington, thinking I will have my task finished and go home the earlier. But the papers are long ones, and being legal, require considerable care and accuracy, and as I finish the last of them I look up.

    It is nearly dark. My watch says it is only three o’clock, but the storm, which seems to be even heavier than in the morning, causes early gloom. I look out on the wild prospect. As well as I can determine, in the uncertain light, glancing through flurries of snow, not one person passes along sidewalks that are usually crowded with humanity.

    What am I to do? I am hungry! I am alone! Even in this great building I am the only one, for no sound comes to me from the offices down stairs, that at this time in the day are usually filled by movement, hurry, and activity.

     Sally will be anxious for me. Though, did not my appetite drive me forth, I believe I should attempt to make a night of it in the great deserted building. I should probably be frightened, though I should barricade myself in. I should probably see ghosts of lawyers and legal luminaries who have long since departed, from these their old offices, to plead their own cases before the Court of Highest Appeal. But hunger! I am more afraid of hunger than of ghosts. Besides, it is so lonely.

    I decide to force my path to Broadway. On that great thoroughfare there must be some one! I lock the door, come down the stairs, step out on the street, and give a shiver. During the day it has grown much colder, though in the warm room I had not noticed it.

    My first step is into an immense snowdrift. Through this I struggle, and reaching the corner of the street am literally blown off my feet, fortunately towards Broadway. Thank Heaven! it is a very short block, though it seems to me an eternity before I reach the thoroughfare that yesterday was the great artery of traffic in New York, but now, as I gaze up and down it, seeking some human face, seems as deserted as a Siberian steppe.

     The shops are all closed, even the drug stores. There are no passing vehicles, no struggling pedestrians. The traffic of the great city has been annihilated by this prodigious storm. Telegraph wires, that last night were overhead, have many of them fallen. There is nothing for me but to struggle onward.

    Rider facing north on South Broadway after the Blizzard (NY Heritage digital collection)

    I turn my face to the north—up town—where three miles away Sally is waiting for me, with a warm fire, and I hope a comfortable meal. Towards this I force my way—for a few minutes.

    Then I trip over a broken telegraph wire that lies in the snow. As I stagger up again, for a moment I am not certain which way I am going. Good Heavens! if I should turn back on my tracks?

    The wild snowstorm about me dazes me, confuses me, benumbs me, and makes me stupid. The strength of the wind forces me to hold my head down; I try to see which way I have come by my tracks in the snow—but there are none! The gusts are so violent, my footsteps have been obliterated almost as I made them.

    Desperate, I look around me, and see, through snow flurries, the light in the great tower of the Western Union Telegraph Building. It seems awfully far away, but gives me my direction; and I struggle northward once more, staggering through drifts—sometimes falling into them, no voice coming to me—alone in a living city that is now dead—killed by the snow. Darkness has fallen upon the streets, and enshrouds me. Still I fight on. There are hotels farther up the street. If I could get to one—if I could get anywhere to be warm!

    I have passed the Western Union Building, I think—I am not sure—my faculties are too benumbed for certainty. All I know is, that I am cold— that I am benumbed—that I am hungry—that I am weak—that the snowdrifts grow larger—the snow flurries stronger—the piercing cutting wind more fierce and merciless—and, above all this, that I am unutterably sleepy. I dream even as I struggle, and then I cease to struggle, and only dream—beautiful dreams—dreams of what I long for—dreams of warmth and comfort, of bounteous meals and generous wine.

    And even as this last comes to me, something is poured down my throat—something that burns, but vivifies—something that brings my senses to me with sudden shock. I hear, still in a half dreamy way, a voice that seems familiar, say:

    “Pat, that is the worst whiskey I have ever tasted; but I think it has done me good, as well as saved this young lady’s life.”

    “By me soul, it has saved mine several times today!” is the answer.

    Then the other voice, the familiar one, goes on: “Do you think you can get us up town?”

    “Faith, I’ve been half an hour coming from the Western Union Building. You may bless God if I make the Astor House alive.”

    “Then somewhere, quick! This will keep her warm.”

    I feel the burning stuff pour down my throat once more, and give me renewed life and sentiency. Strong arms lift me into a cab, a rug is wrapped around me. I open my eyes. Beside me sits a man, to whom I falter, my teeth still chattering, “I—I was lost in the snow.”

    Even as I say this, the familiar voice cries: “Your tones are familiar. Who are you?”

    I answer: “Miss Minturn.”

    And the voice cries: “Good heavens! Thank God I saw you from my coupe in time!”

    And I, still dazed, gasp: “It is Mr. Larchmont, is it not?”

    “Yes: don’t exert yourself, you are weak. In a few minutes we will have you at the Astor House, warm and comfortable. Have no fear.”

    And somehow or other, his voice revives me more than the whiskey. I am contented—even happy.

    But the storm is still upon us; and though there are two strong horses attached to the coupe, fighting for their own lives through the deepening drifts, it is nearly an hour before lights flash on the sidewalk, and I am assisted into warmth and comfort and life once more, in the Astor House parlor.

    There I thaw for a few minutes, during which he sits looking at me, though I am dimly conscious he has given some orders. Having entirely regained my senses, I falter: “I must go home! Sally will be anxious about me!”

    “Where do you live?” he inquires shortly “Seventeenth Street.”

    “Then you could not live to walk home tonight, and no carriage could take you there. There is but one thing for you to do. The housekeeper will be here in a moment. She will take you to a room. Go to bed, and take what I have ordered for you.”

    “What is that?”

    “More whiskey—but it is exactly what you want. In two hours they will have dried your clothes, and you can come down to dinner with—with me.” His “with me” is rather embarrassed and diffident.

    I do not reply, and Mr. Larchmont almost immediately continues: “Or, if you prefer it, the dinner can be sent up to your room.”

    I shall feel quite lonely—it will appear ungrateful. “I will be happy to meet you in the dining room,” I answer.

    A moment after, everything he has arranged is done. I go with the housekeeper, a kindly woman of large build and comfortable manner, and find myself excellently taken care of.

    Two hours afterwards, feeling like a new being, I enter the dining room. It is only half-past seven, and Mr. Harry Larchmont is apparently waiting for me. It is a pleasant, though, perhaps, to me, embarrassing meal. The room is crowded with people that the storm has forced to take refuge in the hotel—Brooklyn men, who cannot get across the East River; Jersey men, who are cut off from home; and downtown brokers, who are un able to reach their uptown residences. The place, in contrast to the dreadful dearth of animal movement in the streets outside, is full of life, bustle, and activity.

    “I think I have arranged very well as regards dinner,” remarks Mr. Larchmont. “We’ll have to be contented with condensed milk, but we shall have some Florida strawberries, and Bermuda potatoes and asparagus.” As we sit down, he says suddenly: “Who is Sally?”

    “Sally? Ah, you mean Miss Broughton?”

    “Yes, the young lady you said would be anxious about you.”

    “Oh,” I answer, “Miss Broughton is my chum!” Then we get to chatting together, and I give him a few Sally anecdotes that make him laugh. As the meal goes on I grow more at my ease, and become confidential, and tell him a good deal of my life, my work, and my battle with the world. This seems to interest him, and once, when I am busy with my knife and fork, I catch his eyes resting upon me, and they seem to say: “So young!”

    But I won’t have his sympathy; so I make merry over my business struggles, and tell him what a comfortable little home Sally and I have.

    Altogether, it is a delightful meal for me, and I am not sorry that Mr. Larchmont lingers over it. He grows slightly confidential himself, over his coffee, explaining to me that he has had some very important telegrams to receive from Paris; that the uptown wires were all down, and he had been so anxious about his cables, that he had contrived to get as far as the main office of the Western Union Company; that he thanks God he succeeded in doing so, though no cablegrams had come to him. “Because,” he concludes, looking at me, “if it had not been for the cables, you might have been still outside in the snow!”

    A few minutes after, he startles me by saying, it seems to me with a little sigh, “I must be going!”

    “Where—into the storm?” I gasp, amazed.

    “Only as far as French’s Hotel, just across in Park Place.”

    I know “just across in Park Place” means three long squares—an awful distance, which might kill a strong man in this driving storm.

    “You must not go!” I cry.

    “Under the circumstances, I must,” he replies, and rises, to cut short remonstrance. Then I go out with him from the dining room into the hall, a blush on my cheeks, but a grateful look in my eyes, for I know it is to save me any embarrassment this night that he will make his desperate journey through snowdrifts and pitiless wind.

    We have got to the ladies’ parlor now. He turns and says earnestly, “I have made every arrangement for you, I think, Miss Minturn, not only for this evening, but for tomorrow, in case you should be compelled to remain here. I am more than happy, and bless God that I met you in time.”

    And I whisper: “You have been to me the—the angel of the blizzard!”

    At which he smiles a little, and his grasp upon my hand tightens as he bids me goodnight.

    Then he is gone into the storm.

    I go to my room; a fire is burning brightly there. Sleep comes upon me, and happy dreams—dreams in which I make a fool of myself about “the angel of the blizzard.”

    The next morning everything has been arranged for me. After a comfortable breakfast, I discover that the storm has ceased, but the streets of New York are still impassable. Then I get a newspaper, and learn that the indefatigable reporters have somehow got information of nearly everything. Glancing over its columns, I give a sigh of relief. In the long list of accidents, escapes, and deaths on that twelfth day of March, 1888, I note that my adventure has not been reported, though I read that French’s Hotel had been so crowded that people had slept upon the billiard tables and floors of that hostelry, and one uptown swell had been obliged to content himself with the bar counter. I guess who the uptown swell was who did this to save me any embarrassment or anxiety, and I bless him!

    I bless him again, when, in the afternoon, I find that the streets can with difficulty be navigated, and the porter coming up, informs me that a carriage has been ordered to take me, as soon as possible, to my address in Seventeenth Street.

    At home, I am welcomed by Sally, with happy but anxious eyes. She cries: “Oh, Louise! I thought you were dead!”

    “Oh, no,” I reply nonchalantly, “I did a day’s work.”

    “And then?”

    “Then I went to the Aster House.”

    “Did you have money enough with you for that? I hear they charged ten dollars a room.”

    “That bill is liquidated,” I return in easy prevarication.

    “But you had a carriage! I noticed a carriage drive up with you. How will you ever pay the hackman? They charge twenty-five dollars a trip.”

    “Never mind my finances. I am home safe once more. And you?” I answer, turning the conversation.

    “Oh, I nearly starved! I would have starved entirely, had I not forced my way to the grocery store. I have been living on crackers and cheese, bologna sausage, and tea without milk.”

    “I have been enjoying the ‘fat of the land’. You had better have gone down with me, Sally. You would have had a delightful day,” I continue airily to my pretty chum, who looks at me in partial unbelief.

    Then the next morning comes a joy—a rapture—a surprise! It is a bunch of violets tied with violet ribbon, with the name of a fashionable florist emblazoned on it, and with it this card:

    Message on card: "Compliments of Mr. Harry Sturgis Larchmont who hopes Miss Minturn has thoroughly recovered from the storm. United Club"

    Fortunately, Sally is out when this arrives, so I avoid explanation. When she comes in, the flowers soon catch her bright eyes. She ejaculates, “Violets! Where did you get violets, Miss Millionnaire?” and smells them to be sure they are genuine—not artificial.

    “Why do you call me Miss Millionnaire?”

    “Well, no one but a Miss Millionnaire can live at the Astor House during blizzards, and perambulate in carriages at twenty-five dollars a trip, and have great big bunches of violets at a dollar a blossom! Gracious! They must have cost thirty dollars! Every flower on Long Island was destroyed by snow.” Then Sally’s eyes open very wide with inquiry, and she says coaxingly: “Who sent them?”

    “Oh,” I reply in easy nonchalance, “I gathered them!”

    “Gathered them? Where?” These are screams of unbelief.

    “Off the snowdrifts on Sixth Avenue, over which they have placed a sign ‘Keep off the grass!’”

    “That means you will not tell me,” says Sally, with a pout.

     “Precisely! “

     “What makes you fib so much lately? “she mutters disappointedly.

    “It is not a fib—that I will not tell you.”

    “Very well! I shall inform Mr. Tompkins!” replies Sally spitefully, which threat causes me to burst into hysterical merriment, I am in such good spirits.

    I write to him at his address: “I am quite well. I thank you for the violets, but for the rest—thanks are too feeble. I only hope some day the mouse may aid the lion. L. R. M.”

    I initial this note.

    Somehow I don’t know how to end it. I have grown strangely bashful and diffident lately.

    That was only a week ago. Once since then I have seen him at the theatre, in attendance upon ladies, one of the party being Miss Jessie Severn.

    As I have looked at him I have noticed that a good deal of the lightness has left his face, and a portion of the laughter has departed from his eyes. Has some cloud come over his life?

    As I look over my diary and recall these things, a sudden thought strikes me. I am going away without bidding him good-by. That will be hardly grateful. It is half-past four: he may be walking on Fifth Avenue. It would hardly be wrong to say “farewell” on a crowded street.

    Five minutes, and I have flown over to that fashionable promenade, and am strolling up its thronged sidewalk. I am in luck. Near Thirty-first Street I see him stepping out of a fashionable club. But there is another gentleman with him, almost his counterpart save that he is ten years older, and has a foreign and un-American air and style about him. This must be Harry Larchmont’s French brother—the one Mr. Delafield had sneered at.

    Of course I cannot speak to him now.

    To my passing bow Mr. Larchmont responds with more than politeness. As I pass, I catch four words from the gentleman who is with him. “She is deuced pretty!”

    Fortunately I am beyond them; they cannot see my blushes through the back of my head. What would I not give to have heard Harry Larchmont’s reply!

    As it is, I shall not even bid him good-by. I return curiously disappointed to our rooms on Seventeenth Street.

    References, Links

    Clemens, Clara. My Father, Mark Twain (NY: Harper, 1931) p. 54.

    ‘Great Blizzard of 88 Hits East Coast’. `This Day in History’ – History.com. Jump to article

    ‘In a Blizzard’s Grasp: The Worst Storm the City has Ever Known’, New York Times, 13 March 1888. PDF.

    Mikolay, Anne M. ‘Remembering the Great Blizzard’ The Monmouth Journal, Feb 10, 2011. Jump to Article

    Schulten, Katherine.`Romance of the Blizzard’, Learning Network, New York Times. PDF (NY Times article Sept 11, 1888),

    New York, NY, Population History.

    Eyewitness account of New York’s Great White Hurricane of 1888 (recorded in 1949)

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 8. The Stenographer’s Dream

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 8. The Stenographer’s Dream

    A refreshing and dramatic change in the narrative treatment. Our narrator has disappeared into the history he has related for readers. Now Gunter uses the form of diary extracts as a literary device to introduce a new pivotal character: Miss Louise Minturn. Rather than the story continuing to be told in third person by an omnipresent narrator, Gunter has made the decision to break up the tone of the narrative stream and intensify observations from a first-person point of view.

    The diary excerpts are wonderful records, insightful, precise and unabashedly indiscrete as diaries are wont to be, because the words stem from the qualities of the female character Gunter has created. Miss Minturn, a nineteen-year-old, is such a keen observer and recorder of events, that one could hardly ask for anyone more accomplished. Reading the detailed dialogue, she has transcribed verbatim, there arises the consideration she might possess a photographic memory which she has yet to reveal.

    There is a moment where Miss Minturn herself reads from the diary an earlier entry, and curiously the reader is privy to what she reads. It is at this point she ceases to be the author of a diary Gunter has somehow purloined for us to read, and becomes a fully-fledged character in her own right. It is a subtle shift but signifies Gunter abandoning the constraints of his diary extracts conceit and taking on Miss Minturn’s point of view in totality. The reader will notice the absence of day and date information usually associated with a diary. The pretense of diary entries is both a mollifying concession to his female readers, who might have been disturbed by the abrupt change from a gruff male narrator to a young lady, and an invitation to intimate thoughts for his voyeuristic readership.

    Louise’s heritage, which the reader will recognize, makes her integral to the larger plot resolution, in addition to her presence bringing an element of romance to the story. The narrator thus far has been almost embarrassingly effusive in describing the many admirable qualities of Harry Larchmont the footballer, but Miss Minturn who is also infatuated takes this adoration to a whole new level.

    Also in future pages the reader will be reminded of how thankful they should be that in case of medical emergency all they need do is call Triple Zero, or that someone present knows CPR, rather than ensuring social decorum is maintained first, before aid.

    A 15th Century Persian doctor, Burhan-ud-din Kermani was the first to describe the use of chest compression for those afflicted with abnormal breathing or shortness of breath, for those with a pulse but in respiratory arrest, and also for those with a weak pulse (Dadmehr et al). In the 1780’s the Royal Humane Society introduced EAV (Expired Air Ventilation) or mouth-to mouth method to the US (Trubuhovich). Rescue Breathing, what we know today as CPR, was developed in the 1960’s through the work of Doctors James Elam, Peter Safar and Archer S. Gordon (Lenzer).

    If indeed, some form of CPR is performed, to the uninitiated the practice would seem both brutal and confronting, so perhaps it is understandable Miss Minturn refrains from describing actual actions, and attributes the resuscitation process to secret men’s football business.

    Although the universal knowledge, prejudices and perspective of our narrator have gone, we now have the delightful Miss Minturn at the centre of affairs to inform, and enlighten us with her opinion.

    BOOK 3

    The American Brother

    CHAPTER 8

    THE STENOGRAPHER’S DAYDREAM

    [Extracts from the diary of Miss Louise Ripley Minturn.]

    “A typewriter, I believe?”

    “A stenographer,” I reply as sternly and indignantly as an Italian tenor accused of being in the chorus, “stenographer!”

    “Oh, excuse me, mademoiselle! Certainly, a stenographer—that is what we require. What salary will you ask to go to Panama, to act as stenographer?”

    “To Pan-a-ma?” There is an excited tremolo in my voice as I say the words, for the proposition is unexpected, and the distance from New York perhaps awes me a little. “Panama, where they are constructing the great canal?”

    “Certainly, mademoiselle. It is because they are building the great canal that I ask you the question.”

    “What will be the cost of living there?”

    “That I hardly know. It will not be small, I am certain, judging by the bills of expense I have seen from there.”

    “Very well,” I reply, American business tact coming to me, “if I go, we will say thirty dollars a week, and expenses.”

    “You are able to take stenographic dictation in English?”

    “Certainly.”

    “And in French?”

    “Yes; but that will be ten dollars a week more.”

    “And in Spanish?”

    “Perfectly. Ten dollars extra.”

    “Ah,” remarks the little clerk, who is half American and half French, “your charges are high; but everyone gets their own price—on the Isthmus.”

    Prompted by this ingenuous remark, and actuated by American business greed, I ejaculate hurriedly: “I also take dictation in German, which will be another ten dollars a week.”

    “Let me try you,” says the little man; and in six minutes he has given me English, French, Spanish and German dictations, to my astonishment, and I have taken them down, and read them correctly, much more to his amazement.

    “Your work is perfectly satisfactory in every language,” he replies. “You will come on the terms you mentioned?”

    “That is, sixty dollars a week, and expenses there and back,” I say, “if I go.”

    “Ah, you are not certain you would like to leave New York? You have ties here?”

    “None,” I reply, a tremble getting into my voice, as I think of my loneliness, and of my mother, who passed away from me but a year before.

    “You would like time to consider the proposition?” suggests my interviewer.

    Typing pool, c.1890

    Looking around upon the dingy copying establishment of Miss Work in Nassau Street, the girls slaving over interminable legal documents on their typewriting machines, and thinking of the drudgery that has been, and still promises to be my lot, I say desperately: “Yes, I will go!”

    “Very well. Remember, you must sign a contract for a year from tomorrow. That is till the twentieth of March, 1889.”

    “Yes.”

    “You must be ready to start the day after tomorrow.”

    “Certainly. Only, of course, as I said before, my contract includes a first-cabin passage to and from Panama.”

    “It shall be as I have promised. Call at the office of Flandreau & Co., No. 331/2 South Street, tomorrow at eleven, for your instructions and contract. Good afternoon—Miss Minturn, I believe your name is?”

    “Yes; make out the contract for Louise Ripley Minturn. But you have not told me the name of the person by whom I am to be employed.”

    “Montez, Aguilla et Cie., Contractors Construction, Panama. You can ask about them at the agents of the canal, Seligman & Co., bankers, or the French Consul—are these references satisfactory?”

    “Perfectly,” I gasp, overcome by the solidity of their sponsors as I sink back, before my Remington, overwhelmed with what I have so hurriedly, and perhaps rashly done, as the dapper little clerk, bowing with French empressement to Miss Work, and with a wave of his hand to the other typewriting ladies, leaves the apartment.

    Montez, Aguilla et Cie. Where have I heard the name before, and Panama—the place my mother used to talk to me about when I was a child. My mother—all thought leaves me save that I have lost her forever, and tears get in my eyes.

    A few minutes after, time having brought me composure, I step over to Miss Work, a sharp Yankee business woman of about thirty-five, and tell her my story.

    “I supposed you would go, Louise,” she says kindly, “when I recommended you for the position. I am very glad that you have got a situation that will enable you to save money. There is, I understand, plenty of it on the Isthmus. I presume you are anxious to go home and make your preparations.”

    Then she settles with me for the work I have done, at the same time telling my companions of my good fortune, which makes a buzz in the room even greater than at lunch-hour, as they come clustering about, to congratulate, and wish me a pleasant journey and good luck, and all the kind wishes that come into the hearts of generous American girls, which even toil and drudgery cannot harden.

    Just as I am going, Miss Work, after kissing me good by, remarks: “Be sure and make every inquiry about your employers, and under whose protection you are to go out to Panama, as the journey is a long one; though I know you are as well able to take care of yourself as any young lady who has been in my employ, and I have had some giants, both physical and intellectual.”

    “Thank you. I’ll remember what you say,” I reply, and turn away.

    As I reach the head of the stairs, there is a patter of light feet after me, and my chum and roommate, Sally Broughton, puts her arm around my waist, and says: “I shall be at home early, too, Louise dear, to help you pack, and do anything I can for you. But,” here she whispers to me rather roguishly, “what will Mr. Alfred Tompkins say to this?”

    “Say!” reply I. “What business is it of Mr. Alfred Tompkins, what Miss Louise Ripley Minturn does?”

    “Notwithstanding this, I’ll bet you dare not tell him.”

    “Dare not tell him? Wait until this evening, and see me,” I answer firmly, as I step down the stairs on my way home to East Seventeenth Street, just off Irving Place, where Sally and I have two rooms—one a parlor and the other a bedroom, for joint use, that we call home.

    Notwithstanding my defiant reply, as I am being conveyed by the Fourth Avenue cars to my destination, Sally’s remark has not only set me to thinking about Mr. Tompkins, one of the floorwalkers and rising young employees of Jonold, Dunstable & Co., but also of—some one else.

    Fifth Avenue and the Vanderbilt Mansions seen from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 1890

    Mr. Tompkins’ blond face fades from my imagination. His yellow hair becomes chestnut; his English side whiskers transform themselves into a long, drooping, military mustache; his pinkish eyes become hazel, flashing, and brilliant. His slightly Roman nose takes a Grecian cast. His wavering chin changes into a firm, strong, and dominating one. His five feet eight, grows into six feet in his stockings. In short, Mr. Alfred Tompkins of Jonold, Dunstable & Co.’s dry-goods establishment, expands into Harry Sturgis Larchmont of the United and Kollybocker Clubs, the leader of cotillons at Newport, Lenox, and Delmonico’s, the ex-lawn-tennis champion and football athlete. I go into a daydream of stupid unreality, and call myself—IDIOT! What have I, one of the female workers of this earth, to do with this masculine butterfly of fashion, frivolity, luxury, and athletics?

    Still—I am a Minturn!

    He dances with my first cousins at Patriarch balls. He takes my aunts down to dinners in Fifth Avenue residences, and plays cards with my uncles at the United and Kollybocker Clubs; a second cousin of mine is one of his chums; though they all apparently have forgotten they have a relative named Louise Ripley Minturn, one of Miss Work’s stenographic and typewriting band at No. 1351/2 Nassau Street, New York, in this year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight.

    My drifting away from my fashionable relatives had been easy: the drifting was done by my father, when he married my mother. He had no money. Neither had my mother, and so they drifted.

    The thought of my mother brings Panama into my mind, and I give a start, for it calls back the sad tale she had told me so often, in my early girlhood, though before her death it had become even an old story to her: the statement of the unrecorded fate that befell her parents upon the Isthmus, no detail of which was known to her, she being a girl of sixteen at that time, at a school near Baltimore.

    Her father, George Merritt Ripley, and her mother, Alice Louise Ripley, were returning from California. Enthusiastic letters said they came laden with the gold of the Sierras, to bring all the blessings of wealth and love to the one daughter of their heart. They had arrived in Panama in April, 1856. Since that time, no word had ever come of their own fate, or that of the treasure they brought with them.

    Their daughter had tried to discover—the lady principal of the school at which she was, had made repeated efforts to learn of George Merritt Ripley and his wife from the American Consul and the agent of the railroad company—but could never discover anything save that my mother’s parents arrived at Panama by the steamer George L. Stevens from San Francisco and then disappeared.

    The lady principal, however, was kind; and my mother, having no near relatives who would assume the care of the orphan, had remained at her school—partly as pupil, partly as music teacher—until Martin Minturn had met her, after he was in his middle age, and had already, during the War of the Rebellion, lost his fortune, which he had invested in Southern securities.

    Turning from the world, perhaps embittered by his losses, he had become one of that class least fitted to battle with its storms and currents—a scientist and philosopher. He was professor of chemistry in a Baltimore university, and came three times a week to lecture at the young ladies’ seminary in which my mother lived a tame and passionless existence as instructor on the piano.

    Mutual sympathy for the misfortunes that had come upon them brought them together. They loved and married.

    Inspired by his love for her, my father had determined to again take up the battle with the world. He had brought his wife with him to New York, and after eight years of heartbreaking disappointment as an inventor and the maker of other men’s fortunes, had died, leaving my mother with very little of this world’s goods, and burdened by myself, a child of six.

    My father before his death had drifted entirely away from his rich and fashionable relatives in New York, who once or twice, in a halfhearted manner, had tried to aid him, and then had finally shut their doors against the man of ill fortune who only came to them to borrow.

    Too proud to ask assistance from those who had turned their backs on her husband, my mother again devoted herself to teaching, this time in a New York school. Here she had lived out her life for me, giving me all she could obtain for me by parsimony and self-denial—a first-rate education, for which God bless her! my dear mother, who has gone from me!

    At last she died, and I, left alone in this world at eighteen, was compelled to put my talents into bread and butter. A fair musician, I was not artist enough to become celebrated. A poor music teacher is the veriest drudge upon this earth. I had studied stenography, and was an accomplished linguist. That seemed a better field. To the moment of writing this, it had been a hard one, though the previous year had been to me generally a pleasant one, and I had made a friend—not a fair-weather friend, but an all-weather friend—Sally Broughton, who sat at the next typewriter to me, at Miss Work’s. Mr. Alfred Tompkins of Jonold, Dunstable’s establishment, and Mr. Horace Jenkins of the rival dry-goods house of Pacy & Co., had also become known to me. These gentlemen are chums, though the haughty Tompkins, whose business place is on Broadway, rather looks down upon his Sixth Avenue factotum.

    Mr. Jenkins greatly admires Miss Sally Broughton. Mr. Alfred Tompkins—but why should I mention a matter that hardly interests me? My life is so lonely, I must talk to someone at times—though Mr. Tompkins says, I am told, that I have a great and haughty coolness in my manner.

    I have also seen, met, and spoken to the athlete, who fills my mind, at the house of his uncle, Larchmont Delafield, the great banker.

    Here the conductor of the Fourth Avenue car disturbs my meditations by calling out in stentorian tones: “TWENTY-THIRD STREET!”

    With a start, I remember Seventeenth is my destination, and jump off the car, reflecting that my musings have cost me an unnecessary promenade of six Fourth Avenue blocks.

    While making this return trip, my mind goes wandering again. It seems, now that I am about to leave New York, to take me to the object that has most interested me in it—the frank hazel eyes, that have appeared to be always laughing, when I have seen them, and the graceful athletic figure of Harry Sturgis Larchmont.

    So getting to the little bedroom and parlor en suite that Miss Broughton and I call home, I take out my diary, and in its pages go back to the time I first met him.

    His uncle, Mr. Larchmont Delafield, had had a good deal of stenographic and typewriting work done at Miss Work’s office. Mr. Delafield, being anxious to complete some very important correspondence, was confined to his house by an attack of gout. I was sent to his house on Madison Avenue, one evening, to take a dictation from him.

    Residence on Riverside Drive, c. 1906

    Arriving at his mansion about half-past seven o’clock in the evening, I found evidences of an incipient dinner party. A magnificent woman and very charming girl, both in full evening dress, preceded me up the grand staircase. The footman was about to show me after them into the ladies’ reception room, when I told him my call was simply one of business with his master.

    A moment after, I found myself in the study of the banker, who was apparently in one of those extraordinary bad tempers, peculiar to gout.

    “Shut the door, John!” he thunders at the domestic, “and keep the odors of that infernal dinner out of my nostrils. I long for it, but can’t have it!”

    “Yes, sir,” replies the footman, about to retire.

    “Stop!” cries the banker. “Tell my nephew, Harry Larchmont, to come up and see me at once. Has he arrived yet?”

    “Yes, sir, with Mrs. Dewitt and Miss Severn.”

    “Of course—of course—with Miss Jessie Severn! the girl with the plump shoulders that she shows so nicely,” says the old gentleman, with a savage chuckle. “Tell him to come up—that I want to see him instantly, though I won’t keep him long.”

    A moment after, Mr. Harry Sturgis Larchmont stalks lazily into the apartment, in faultless evening dress, decorated with a big bunch of lilies of the valley, and looking the embodiment of neat fashion.

    “Harry, my boy,” says the banker, “I want to see you for a moment.”

    “So I was just told. I’m awful sorry the doctors won’t permit you to join us,” returns the young man, giving the elder a hearty grip of the hand.

    “Don’t speak of the dinner,” mutters old Delafield. “My mouth waters at the thought of the canvasback ducks now. But it is of this I wish to speak to you. You must occupy my place, as host, with Mrs. Delafield. I know I can leave my reputation for hospitality in your hands.”

    “I’ll do my best, sir,” replies young Larchmont. Then he gives a sudden start of horror, and ejaculates: “Great goodness! My taking your place as host entails my taking that fat dowager, Mrs. John Robinson Norton, in to dinner.”

    “I’m afraid it does, my poor boy,” grins his uncle, “but I spoke to my wife, and pretty little Miss Jessie Severn sits on the other side of you. You have only to turn your head to see her blue eyes and plump shoulders. She has also exquisite ankles; you should have kept her in the short dresses she came over in from Paris a month ago. You’re kind of half guardian to her, ain’t you?” runs on the old man.

    “It is necessary to drape a young lady’s ankles to bring her out in society,” returns Mr. Larchmont. “Miss Severn is now out. Mrs. Dewitt is chaperoning her. Besides,” the young man goes on, playfully, “you’re too old for ankles. At your time of life the ballet!”

    “If you didn’t know, Harry, that you were my favorite nephew, you wouldn’t dare such wit,” chuckles the uncle. Then he goes on: “I suppose you feel so financially comfortable already, that you never think of my will?”

    “Thank God, I never do, dear old uncle!” says the young man, earnestly.

    Antique postcard, n.d.

    “Besides, if you marry Miss Severn, she’ll have a pretty plum,” goes on old Delafield.

    At this the nephew suddenly looks serious, and I think I detect a slight sigh.

    Somehow or other, as I look at Harry Sturgis Larchmont, I begin to dislike the pretty little Miss Jessie Severn. I had seen this gorgeous masculine creature, when I was sixteen and enthusiastic, at a football game, and had gloried in his triumphs on that brutal arena.

    Interest begets interest, and as the young gentleman turns to go, he casts inquiring gaze upon me. This is answered by his uncle, in the politeness of the old school, as he says: “Miss Minturn, let me present my nephew, Mr. Harry Larchmont.”

    “Miss Minturn has kindly consented to act as my stenographer this evening, on some important business, that cannot be delayed;” interjects the elder man, as the younger one bows to me, which I, anxious to maintain my dignity, return in a careless and nonchalant manner.

    A moment after, Mr. Larchmont has left the room. While his uncle chuckles after him sotto voce: “A fine young man! I wish that French brother of his, Frank, the Parisian la de da, was more like him—more of an American!” Then he snaps his lips together, and says: “To business!”

    “But your dinner!” I suggest hurriedly, for I have somehow grown to sympathize with the old gentleman’s appetite.

    “My dinner? My dinner consisted of oatmeal gruel, which was digested two hours ago, thank Heaven! To business!” cries the old man.

    With this, he commences to dictate to me a number of letters on some very important and confidential transactions. As we go on, these letters approach a climax. I have been at work nearly two hours, when an epistle to the president of a railroad, who, he thinks, is attempting some underhand game with its preferred stock holders, makes the old gentleman intensely angry. His face gets red; as he continues, his letter, from being that of a business man, becomes one of vindictive and bitter animosity. His asides are, I am sorry to say, strong almost to the verge of profanity. His hands tremble, his voice becomes husky, and as he closes the letter with “Yours most respectfully,” Larchmont Delafield utters a savage oath, and rising from his chair, after two or three attempts at articulation that end in gasps and gurgles, falls back into it. I am alone with a man apparently stricken with an attack of apoplexy, brought on by his own passions.

    I hastily open the door. The noise of laughter and gayety downstairs, comes to me, up the great staircase. The perfume of flowers, and the faint music of the orchestra, tell of revelry below.

    I hesitate to make this scene of gayety one of consternation and sorrow. I hurriedly press the button of an electric bell.

    A moment after, a footman coming to me, I say: “Please quietly ask Mr. Harry Larchmont to come up to his uncle. Mr. Delafield wishes to see him immediately.”

    “I can do that easily, now,” replies the man. “The ladies are in the parlor, and the gentlemen are by themselves in the dining room.”

    I wait at the head of the stairs. Mr. Larchmont coming up, says: “My uncle wishes to see me, I believe.”

    ‘“No!” I reply.

    “No?—he sent for me.”

    “He did not send for you—I did.”

    “You?” The young man gazes at me in astonishment.

    “Yes; I did not wish to disturb the gayety of the party below. Your uncle has had a seizure of some kind—a fit!”

    “Thank you for your consideration,” he answers, and in another second is by the side of the invalid, and I looking at him, admire him more than ever.

    This gentleman of pleasure has become a man of action.

    “Some cold water on his head—quick!” he says sharply. I obey, and he lifts his uncle up, and proceeds to resuscitate the old gentleman by means that are known to athletes. While he is doing this, he says rapidly to me: “Ring the bell, and give the footman the notes I will dictate to you.”

    As I do his bidding, and sit down; never relaxing his efforts to bring consciousness back to his uncle, the young man dictates hurriedly:

    “Dear Sir: Come to Mr. Larchmont Delafield’s, No. 1241/2 Madison Avenue, at once. He has had an attack of epilepsy or apoplexy—I think the latter. Simply ask for Mr. Delafield. There is a dinner party below.

    Yours in haste,

    HARRY STURGIS LARCHMONT.”

    “Triplicate that letter,” he says. “Send one to Dr. George Howland, another to Dr. Ralph Abercrombie, and the third to Dr. Thomas Robertson; you’ll find their addresses in that directory.”

    As I finish these the footman comes in.

    “Not a word of this, John,” Mr. Larchmont says, “to anybody! Take these three letters, go downstairs, and give them to three of the servants. There are half a dozen in the kitchen. Tell them they must be delivered, each of them, within ten minutes—and a five-dollar bill for you.”

    A quarter of an hour later, the young man has partially revived his uncle.

    A moment after, one of the doctors summoned stands beside him, and says that the attack is not a serious one, and that the old gentleman will be all right with rest and care.

    “Very well,” replies Mr. Harry; “if that is the case, I will go down to the dinner party. No one has been alarmed—not even Mrs. Delafield—and all owing to the thoughtfulness of this young lady, to whom I tender my thanks.” He bows to me and goes down to the festival below, while I gather up my papers and dictation book, and make my preparations for departure.

    A few minutes afterwards, I come down the great stairway also, and stand putting on my cloak in the hall.

    As I do so, through tapestry curtains, that are partially open, I see, for the first time in my life, one of the great reception rooms of a New York mansion. Lighted by rare and peculiar lamps, each one of them a work of art, adorned by numerous pictures, statues, and costly bric-a-brac from the four corners of the earth; embellished and perfumed by hothouse plants and flowers; and made bright by lovely women in exquisite toilettes, and men in faultless evening dress, the scene is a revelation to me.

    But I linger only on one portion of it. In front of a large mantel-piece stands Harry Larchmont, talking to a young lady who is a dream of fairy-like loveliness in the lace, tulle, and gauze that float about her graceful figure. She is scarcely more than a child yet, but her eyes are blue as sapphires, her chin piquant, her laugh vivacious, her smile enchanting. I am compelled to admit this, though for some occult reason I do not care to do so.

    For one short second I compare the face and figure in the parlor with the one I see reflected in the great hall mirror beside me. A flash of joy! It seems to me I am as pretty as Miss Jessie Severn. Perchance, if I wore the same exquisite toilette, my lithe figure and brunette charms would be as lovely as her blonde graces. Perhaps even he—

    Here fool’s blushes come upon me. His voice sounds in my ear.

    It says: “I have excused myself for a moment from my guests, to again thank you, Miss Minturn, for your presence of mind and thoughtful action this evening. The night is stormy—you have been kept here late.” Then he turns and directs the man at the door: “John, call up the carriage for Miss Minturn.”

    He holds out a hand, which I take, as I stammer out my thanks, and looking in his eyes, I know he means what he says. Perhaps more—for there is something in his glance that makes me, as I go out of the massive oaken doors and down the great stairs, and pass through the little throng of waiting footmen, and take the equipage his care has provided for me, grow bitter, for the first time in my life, at my fate.

    As I ride to my modest rooms in quiet Seventeenth Street, I clinch my hands, and mutter: “Had my mother’s parents not disappeared upon that Isthmus of Panama, their gold might have made me the guest, instead of the stenographer. At dinner he might have gazed upon my pretty shoulders—not Miss Jessie Severn’s.”

    Fool that I am, I think these things! For I have admired this young gentleman’s victories on the football field, and his presence of mind and action more this evening. “He seems to me a man who might make a woman—” But I stop myself here, and gasp: “You are crazy! Typewriter! you are crazy!”

    Reaching home, I take out my clicking Remington, and over the correspondence of Mr. Delafield the banker, Miss Minturn the stenographer tries to forget Mr. Harry Larchmont the man of fashion.

    Notes and References

    • cotillons: “French country dance, a social dance, popular in 18th-century Europe and America. Originally for four couples in square formation.” Belvedire Heritage.
    • apoplexy: “stroke, a sudden, usually marked loss of bodily function due to rupture or occlusion of a blood vessel, a hemorrhage into an organ cavity or tissue or a state of extreme anger.” Dictionary.com.
    • empressement: display of cordiality.
    • factotum: “a person, as a handyman or servant, employed to do all kinds of work around the house, also any employee or official having many different responsibilities.” Wordreference.com.

    References

    Dadmehr, M., Bahrami, et al.: Chest compression for syncope in medieval Persia. European Heart Journal, Volume 39, Issue 29 (2018) 2700-2701. Jump to article

    Lenzer, J.: Peter Josef Safar: The father of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

    Trubuhovich, Ronald B.: History of mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing. Part 2: the 18th century. PDF at Researchgate.

    Ambience: Ella Fitzgerald, Manhattan

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 6. Jesse’s Letter

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 6. Jesse’s Letter

    Although this chapter begins in 1880, it spans the years to 1887. The Baron Montez, Larchmont and his ward, Jessie, arrive in Paris at the centre of a glorious time which in the future will be known as the ‘Belle Epoque’. Imagine wide boulevards where bunches of flowers spill from vendors’ baskets onto the pavement before you, ladies in colorful flowing dresses with ornamented bustles parading, carrying equally beautiful parasols, gentlemen in tailored suits and top hats, the fragrance of coffee from the many cafes, the boulangerie and the sweet smell of fresh bread filling the air, artisan shops and vendors of all types, salons with art covering every inch of their walls. There is sunshine, fresh air and walks in the numerous squares and parks to be enjoyed, but these are only relatively recent additions to life in Paris.

    Boulevard des Capucines (1873), Claude Monet

    In 1853, the Emperor Napoleon III decided to continue the civil works of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte. Many plans and attempts in the past to improve and modernize Paris had failed. Paris had been closed up and congested with numerous tenements and slums in which pestilence and disease prevailed. The average life expectancy of a Parisian was forty-six years versus a rural life expectancy of fifty-years (Kesztenbaum & Rosenthal). Louis Napoleon engaged Georges-Eugène Haussmann to carry out massive civil works while renovating and repairing landmark buildings and facilities damaged during the reign of the Commune. One of the first works completed is the restoration and extension of the Rue Rivoli where a special character in Gunter’s novel, Bastien Lefort, has his glove shop.

    Napoleon III instructed Haussman to ‘aérer, unifier, et embellir’ (ventilate, unify and beautify) Paris. Haussmann’s plan constructed boulevards and avenues, squares, and parks; theatres, markets, schools; new railway stations, a sewerage system and freshwater aqueduct. The projects employed thousands of workers.

    Immigrants flooded Paris, as did art students, including those from the United States, who made up the largest foreign contingent, to study in the numerous art schools (Weinberg). Not just art students but sculptors, architects, writers, academics and wealthy American collectors. The whole city was brimming with culture as its population boomed. The construction of the Eiffel Tower would soon commence. The construction of sewers beneath the city had begun and the delivery of fresh water to parts of Paris; this as well as the introduction of trashcans, known as poubelle after their instigator, would lead to a rise in life expectancy. During the Exposition internationale d’électricitė in 1881, the Grands Boulevards were illuminated with electric lights. The hill overlooking Paris, Montmartre, once a rural district, was brought into Paris proper, and its cheap accommodation became a haven for artists of the like of Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Degas and many others. It was an exciting time to be in Paris. At the bottom of the hill, in 1882 the city’s first modern cabaret, Le Chat Noir, opened.

    La danse au Moulin Rouge (1890), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

    Rather than the beauty that is vibrant Paris, which someone such as young Jessie might enjoy, our narrator is more concerned with the speculative financial skullduggery of Baron Montez, who is growing in influence and wealth, naturally to the detriment of others. As anticipated by the Baron, the doomed French Panama Canal project is coming to an end and investors in the enterprise will see their shares become valueless. If this weren’t enough, in January 1882 the Paris Bourse crashes due to the failing of the Union Générale bank, which causes ten years of recession (White). Our narrator doesn’t mention this, and the financial dealings of the Baron Montez are dealt with summarily, for it is all background noise to his major play for the lovely seventeen-year old Jessie.

    It is not by accident that a young Jessie expresses a fervent pride in being American, nor is the arrival of Larchmont’s all-American brother, Harry to set up a dynamic with his opposite, the weak-chinned, sedentary Francophile, Francis. Defense of American values abroad our Author knows will appeal to his readers; and isn’t it only right that it should be the wholesome, strong, patriotic Harry and his remarkable elbow that intercedes for our Goddess of Liberty?

    CHAPTER 6

    JESSIE’S LETTER

    After this, the time passes pleasantly for the great Frenchman and his party at Panama in picnics, sight-seeing, and excursions around the beautiful bay. They run down to the Pearl Islands, and visit Montez’ villa at Toboga. They view the ruins of the old city, and finally, the preliminary reports from the engineers being received, they one day put a little dynamite cartridge into the great mountain of Culebra, which will be the deepest cut on the whole line, and blow out an infinitesimal portion of its great side, little Mademoiselle Fernanda de Lesseps touching off the giant powder fuse, and announcing that work has really commenced on the great canal.

    Then they depart, Monsieur de Lesseps taking steamer from Colon to the United States to obtain the proper concessions from the Panama Railroad Company necessary to his legally carrying out his project. Baron Montez and his Franco-American friend, however, leave the Isthmus direct for France, via Martinique and St. Lucia.

    At Martinique they stop a day or two, and chance in a local museum to see one of the deadly snakes of that Island, the fer-de-lance, at which they all shudder, but Fernando turns very white and trembles; so much so, that little Jessie, holding her governess’ arm, says: “Mademoiselle, why is Baron Montez so afraid of a snake?”

    “Mon Dieu! my dear, replies the Frenchwoman, “everybody trembles at such hideous, crawling, deadly things. You did—so did I!”

    “But I didn’t nearly faint—and he is a man, and I am only a little girl!” And she looks with wondering, childish eyes after Montez, who has moved away from the sight.

    But they soon leave this island. Two weeks later finds them at that centre of the French universe—the great city on the Seine—where Francis Leroy Larchmont settles down in a beautiful villa on the residential part of the Boulevard Malesherbes near the pretty little Parc Monceau with his little ward and attendants, and Baron Montez engages fine apartments just off the Boulevard de Capucines, where he can be near the Press Club and baccarat, an amusement in which he takes great delight.

    He soon has hosts of friends, for he spends his money freely, hoping to get return from the same in the near future, with usurer’s interest.

    In this capital of France, De Lesseps, soon after returning from the United States, inaugurates his great scheme. The shares are taken by the peasants of France, every village has its subscriber, work is begun in reality upon the canal.

    Then comes the time of harvest for Montez. He founds the firm of Montez, Aguilla et Cie.—Aguilla being practically a clerk, with a nominal interest—and for it obtains a contract for a portion of the work, at great figures. He circulates between Paris and Panama, dabbling in contracts, dabbling in shares, and making money in everything, for he knows what takes place on the Isthmus, as well as what goes on in Paris.

    All the time he is doing this, investors’ money is being squandered like water, and the shares of the Canal Company go lower and lower. But Montez loses not. He has ecome too near the Board of Directors to suffer; he knows too much of the inside politics of the scheme to permit its magnates to let him lose a single franc in this Canal Interoceanic.

    Besides, he, by the diplomatic arts of entertaining and open pocket book, is now a boon companion with many a space-writer for the press—a class vigorously strong in shrieking their incorruptibility, and very pliable to the persuasive check book and bank bill, as impecunious classes generally are. Again, he has a few easy deputies of the Corps Législatifs under his thumb, owing to postponed debts at baccarat and many little suppers at Des Ambassadeurs and le Madrid and the Alcazar. In fact, he is a power at which the directors of the canal stand aghast, and would strike down were their enterprise upon a basis sufficiently solid for them not to fear what Fernando Baron Montez’ ready tongue might hint to stock holders already becoming suspicious.

    But stock and preferences in a losing concern, to make their owner rich must be converted into money of the realm and more substantial securities. To do this it was necessary to find purchasers; and to beguile, allure and dazzle investors to transfer their gold to his pockets; for shares in the Canal Interoceanic had been Montez’ first, great and continuous effort ever since he had determined the enterprise must fall, even of its own weight.

    His ready tongue, unscrupulous assertion, and, if necessary, direct and brilliant lies, had gained many listeners and some believers, notably among them one Bastien Lefort. This person, curiously enough, was a noted miser, who had lived to sixty, saving his accumulations, adding to them franc by franc the product of not only a life of toil, but a life of absolute deprivation. Beginning as a clerk in a small booth, he had saved and pinched till he had become a shopkeeper himself. Then he had squeezed and accumulated till he was worth nigh on to a million francs, each one of which meant not so much profit, but so much stint and discomfort and privation—even to lack of fire in winter and lack of food in summer. This hoarded treasure he did not dare invest in real estate—even city property sometimes depreciates. He did not dare deposit in a bank—banks fail—but kept his gold in safes of his own and the strong box of the miser.

    All his life Bastien Lefort had said he was looking for an investment—one that would be sure as the Bank of France but would return large usury—such an investment he had been seeking for forty years. Within three months after Baron Montez strolled into his little magasin de gants, on the Rue Rivoli, to buy a pair of gloves, the Panama philanthropist found it for him.

    Among those gathered into these Panama ventures is François Leroy Larchmont. From the year 1880 to 1887 Fernando has been gradually involving the wealth of the Franco-American, who has become his bosom friend; and not content with this, has succeeded in drawing into the financial maelstrom that is now running over Paris, the fortune of the orphan, the little girl, that her weak guardian had in his charge, and which should have been secured in consols and collaterals undoubted.

    So one day, towards the close of the year 1887, Montez thinks it time to speak, for all these years the loveliness of this graceful girl—this American beauty—this fairy beauty, who is still in the schoolroom, but nearly a woman, has appealed more and more to him. He has looked upon it, and says it shall be his. He has whispered to himself: “These people are in the toils. I am wealthy as a New York nabob! I will marry this beautiful creature. The loveliness of the Baroness Montez shall make her a queen in the fashionable circles of this gay capital, and I shall be one of its princes—I, Fernando Gomez Montez, once mule-boy on the Cruces trail!”

    Thinking this, he one day calls upon his bosom friend, François Leroy Larchmont, who is just admiring a newly purchased picture, for this gentleman is a dilettante in everything artificial, and dabbles in paintings, scores of unproduced operas, and manuscript verses and novels; dealing with the prodigality of a connoisseur, and the lack of knowledge of an amateur.

    “I want to speak to you, Larchmont, mi amigo, on a particular subject.”

    “Yes, but first admire the beauty of this picture, Montez. The head is that of a newly discovered Madonna!”

    “Ah, but not as beautiful as Mademoiselle Jessie, your ward.”

    “Why, Montez, she is but a child!”

    “Nevertheless it is time she should marry, I wish to speak to you of her!”

    Turning from his painting, in his nonchalant way, François Leroy Larchmont hears words that give him a fearful shock.

    He remonstrates.

    Then the easy tone of the friend changes to the voice of the master; and before the interview is over, this weak and untrustworthy creature has given such hostage to his enslaver that makes him ashamed to look his lovely charge in the face; for he knows in his feeble heart he has done the act of the dastard and the coward.

    Now while this has been going on, several times in the years between 1880 and 1887, François Leroy Larchmont has received visits from his younger brother Harry Sturgis Larchmont, who has come over from the United States when his collegiate course has been finished, and has assumed, in his offhand, American style, the rôle of a relative, and the good comradeship of a friend, to his brother’s pretty ward.

    This has been done in the easy manner of youth.

    Young American, postcard, Atlantic City (n.d.)

    Once, on his visit after his college days at Yale, he had upheld her against guardian and governess in a way that had endeared him greatly to Miss Rebel.

    It was one Fourth of July. Harry had come in the dusk of the day to dress for the banquet in honor of the United States at the American Minister’s.

    He is talking to his brother in the salon which looks out upon a little courtyard made pretty by flower beds, and a graceful kiosk in which the gentlemen sometimes take their breakfasts.

    Harry has just remarked, “Frank, I’m sorry you sent a regret to Mr. Washburn’s invitation. It looks as if you had forgotten George Washington and fire crackers.”

    “My dear Henri,” lisps the elder brother, “I have promised to listen to a new manuscript comedy. Farandol, le jeune, its author, thinks I have influence with the management of the Palais Royal, and may get it produced. As for firecrackers and such juvenile nuisances—” Here he gives a great start, and cries, “Mon Dieu! What is that? Dynamite?”

    For a loud explosion has just come from the garden, and Parisians, in grateful memory of the Commune, always fear dynamite and Anarchists.

    “I rather imagine that is a little piece of the Fourth of July,” laughs Harry, who has made Miss Severn a patriotic present of fireworks and firecrackers this very morning.

    A moment after, Jessie, with defiant face that is slightly grimed with gunpowder and burning punk, and a bunch of firecrackers in her hand, is dragged into the room by her governess and an attendant maid.

    “In spite of my protestations and commands she has exploded them in the bed of daisies, Monsieur Larchmont,” says the duenna, looking with reproving eyes upon her charge who stands pouting but unrepentant.

    “Mon Dieu! My white daisies! “cries Mr. François; then he remarks sternly: “This is most unseemly! Jessie, don’t you know it is wrong to disobey your governess—wrong to make a noise, and disturb me with explosions?”

    “Not on the Fourth of July!” mutters the child. Then her eyes flash, and she cries, “I will fire them! I’m American! I ain’t French, and I will fire them!” and emphasizes her declaration by defiant eyes and stamping feet.

    “Oh, this is terrible!” murmurs Mr. Larchmont.

    “If you would permit me,” suggests the instructress, “I think Miss Jessie should be put to bed.”

    “What! for being a patriot?” cries Harry, intruding on the scene. Then the young man goes on firmly, “Jessie shall celebrate the Fourth, and I’ll help her.”

    “But, Henri,” expostulates his brother, “the gensd’armes will arrest me. It is violating a municipal ordinance.”

    “Then you pay the fine, or I’ll do it for you,” returns the younger man. “You go off to your comedy reading, and Miss Jessie and I’ll make a patriotic night of it.”

    “Will you?” cries the girl; then she comes to him and puts her arms about him, after the manner of trusting childhood, and whispers, “I knew you would. You’re a Yankee, so am I.”

    “You bet!” says Harry, giving way to slang in this moment of patriotic enthusiasm. “You and I, Jessie, are the only Americans in this house.”

    “Well, have your will!” replies the older brother. “I’ll go off to the reading and get away from the noise.—Jessie, come and kiss me goodnight.”

    “I won’t,” returns Miss Jessie. “You would have let Mademoiselle put me to bed if it hadn’t been for Harry—Harry’s my chevalier.”

    “You won’t kiss me,” mutters the child’s guardian.

    Then he astonishes his brother, for he goes to his pouting charge, and says: “I beg your pardon, little one. Won’t that get a kiss?”

    “Yes, two!” answers Jessie, and gives him three very sweet ones, for her guardian is very kind to her, and generally lets her do her will except when it disturbs his ease or puts him to trouble.

    So Harry and Jessie go off to their fireworks, where, amid revolving pinwheels and colored lights, the little lady in her dainty Parisian dress looks like a miniature Goddess of Liberty, though Mademoiselle, her governess, shakes her head; and the maid, whose white apron has been soiled and her cap put awry, and her skin somewhat bruised by the struggles of Miss Rebel when she had been dragged in, mutters: “If I had my way with Miss Vixen, I’d smack her good.”

    After this Miss Jessie looks upon Harry Larchmont as her Court of Appeals from all decisions against her childish whims. And when, sometime after, a pretty trinket of gold and jewels, commemorative of this event, comes to her from New York, it does not tend to make her forget her Fourth of July champion.

    Young woman of La Belle Epoch (Fr. postcard, n.d.)

    This very year, when he is making a little tour of Europe, Miss Severn has renewed her trust in him, and they have grown greater friends. The exquisite beauty and grace of the girl have appealed to him, as they would to any man, though she has seen but few, being still kept at her studies much closer than Mr. Harry Larchmont thinks is necessary. For, on leaving for his German trip he has remarked to his brother; “Why not bring Jessie over to America, put her in society, and marry her to an American?”

    “She is too young for society.”

    “She is not too young to have a good time. Give her a chance at a beau anyway. Whether she marries or does not, just at present is of no particular moment; but her enjoyment is!”

    “I will consider your suggestion, Henri,” says the brother, a wistful expression coming over his face, but his answer is cut short.

    “Confound it! Don’t call me Henri. Do you suppose I would ever call you François?” bursts in the younger brother. Then he goes on quite dictatorially, “Frank, be an American, and a man. Leave this foreign place where you are dawdling away your existence!”

    “And what are you doing in America?”

    “Nothing!”

    “Am I not doing the same in Paris?” says the other, with an attempt at a laugh, which changes into a sigh as he continues, “I wish I could leave Paris!”

    “What keeps you?”

    “My interests.”

    “Pooh! your fortune is well invested, and you can sell this pretty little villa at a profit, even now, notwithstanding Panama shares have gone down!” answers the younger brother. So, departing upon his journey, he thinks he will have an hour in Dresden, a week in Vienna, three days in Berlin, and get home for the first Patriarchs’ ball of the season in New York.

    Curiously enough, this young gentleman, though a man of fashion, has a good deal of action in him; though nominally he does nothing, he is energy itself, killing time by athletics, hunting, pigeon shooting. He is very good at some of these sports, which, if they do not exactly elevate a man, at least keep his muscles in condition, and his mind active. He has been a great football player, and is still remembered in his college as a wonderful half back. He leads the German at Delmonico balls, with a vigor that startles the languid youths who perform in the cotillon; and young ladies are very happy to have his strong arm as a guide, and his potent elbow as a guard from collisions in the dance, for he has not yet forgotten an old football trick.

    His innocent looking elbow has many times caused young Johnnie Ballet, who dances so recklessly, and Von Duzen Van Bobbins, who prances about so carelessly, to wonder why they so suddenly get extremely faint and out of breath, when they come in contact with his deft elbow. But they have not played on college campi, and do not know how effective this elbow has been in putting many a Princeton rusher out of play, and many a Harvard slugger on the ground, in the desperate scrimmages of the football field.

    It is late in 1887 when Harry Larchmont goes away for his German tour, in the careless, easy frame of mind that he has been wont so far to run through life. Three days afterwards, at Cologne, he receives an agitated letter from Miss Jessie Severn, praying him to come to her for heaven’s sake, before he leaves for America. Its end gives this easygoing young athlete a start, for it closes:

    “Dear good Harry, as you love the memory of your mother, don’t let your brother know I wrote this.

    Your frightened to death

    Jessie.”

    Notes, References, Further Reading

    • poubelle: common Parisian term for trashcan named after Eugène-René Poubelle (15 April 1831 – 15 July 1907)  a French lawyer and diplomat who introduced waste containers to Paris.
    • Culebra: “the name of the mountain ridge the canal cuts through and also originally applied to the cut itself. The cut forms part of the Panama Canal, linking Gatun Lake, and thereby the Atlantic Ocean, to the Gulf of Panama and hence the Pacific Ocean. Digging at Culebra began on January 22, 1881. A combination of disease, underestimation of the problem, and financial difficulties led to the collapse of the French effort. The French had excavated some 14,256,000 cubic metres (18,646,000 cu yd) of material from the cut, and had lowered the summit from 64 meters (210 ft) above sea level[4] to 59 meters (193 ft),[5] over a relatively narrow width.”
    • fer-de-lance: “Bothrops asper (common names Terciopelo [English], Cuatro Narices [Spanish], and often called the fer-de-lance (French – ‘spearhead’). It is a highly venomous pit viper species, ranging in distribution from southern Mexico to northern South America. It is found in a wide range of lowland habitats, often near human habitations. Because of its proximity to human habitations and its defensive temperament.”
    • magasin de gants: store of gloves.
    • consols: form of government issued perpetual bond, i.e. irredeemable.
    • dilettante: “a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge” (lexico.com).
    • dastard: someone wicked and cruel.
    • le jeune: the young
    • the Commune: “a radical socialist, anti-religious, and revolutionary government that ruled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871.”
    • duenna: from Spanish—”older woman acting as a governess and companion in charge of girls” (lexico.com).
    • gensd’armes: ‘men at arms’, armed police,
    • chevalier: a knight of prestigious order such as French Legion of Honour.
    • Goddess of Liberty: an atemporal comment, likely referring to the Statue of Liberty, which at the time of the story has yet to be built. Throughout history there have been many goddesses of Liberty—the Roman goddess Libertas is one, Marianne who wore the cap of Liberty in 1792 another—though it is unlikely he means any of these.
    • cotillon: “French country dance, a social dance, popular in 18th-century Europe and America. Originally for four couples in square formation.”
    • Corps Legislatif:  “a part of the French legislature during the French Revolution and beyond. It is also the generic French term used to refer to any legislative body.”

    Calavita, Nico. ‘Haussman, Baron George-Eugene’, in Caves (333-4) .

    Caves, Roger R, ed. Encyclopedia of the City. (London: Routledge, 2005). Re. Haussman.

    Glancey, Jonathan. ‘The Man who Created Paris‘, BBC Culture / Architecture.

    Kesztenbaum, Lionel & Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, “Public goods and health inequality; Lessons from Paris, 1880-1914”, IAST General Seminar, Toulouse: IAST, October 11, 2012. PDF here.

    Papayanis, Nicholas. Planning Paris Before Haussmann (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2004).

    ‘The Making of Paris: The Grands Travaux of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann (1848-71).’ Alliance Française of Boston. Video URL.

    Weinberg, Barbara H. ‘Americans in Paris, 1860–1900‘, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Oct. 2006.

    White, E. (2007), “The Krach of 1882 and the Bailout of the Paris Bourse”, Cliometrica, 1.2, pp. 115–144. PDF, Rutgers.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour