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  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 22. The Mind of a Lunatic

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 22. The Mind of a Lunatic

    Harry has returned to Paris, and in this chapter he has to deal with the dangerously paranoid delusional antics of his brother, and the effect of his behaviour on everyone around him. The use of the word ‘lunatic’ in a medical sense serves to remind the reader that through the pages of the novel we are also exploring a world of over a hundred and thirty years ago. The term is derived from the Latin term ‘lunaticus’ which referred to those Romans suffering epilepsy or another demonstrable form of mental illness and attributed their behaviour to the effects of the moon.

    Harry calls in a well-regarded French doctor to examine Frank/Francois, his brother. The Doctor from his wealth of knowledge offers two alternatives as causes: nerves or the brain. He goes away saying he will think on it, for it is patently obvious he hasn’t got a clue. Lay people of today, without medical degrees, might have a number of suggestions for Frank’s behaviour, in contrast to people of the time, who were lost for explanation. Sigmund Freud had only just begun his work developing psychoanalysis, which in due course, besides treating those with a mental illness, will endow us with another way of looking at ourselves and our lives. Those of the late 19th Century are on the cusp of great changes in human life and perception. Between ourselves and readers of the time, there is a huge gulf; most have yet even to experience instant electric lighting, which will brighten and expand a person’s day considerably.

    Page 1 of George Eastman’s patent no. 388,850, for his film camera and roll film, US Patent and Trademark Office

    ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’ is a well-known quote from writer Arthur C. Clarke. A recent invention of the time which also heralds a change in human perspective comes into Frank’s hands. Invented by George Eastman, the first Kodak camera went on sale for $25 in 1888 with the advertising line: ‘You push the button, we do the rest.’ The camera, which lacked a viewfinder, came with a roll of film capable of producing one hundred oval-shaped photographs. Once completely expended, for the sum of $10 a customer could return the camera to the Eastman Dry Plate Company. The worthwhile photographs were returned, together with a fully loaded camera ready to go again (Smith). This, in 1893, may be the first instance of a roll-film camera to be used in a fictional novel.

    Frank admits to Harry that he has bribed members of the French Chamber of Deputies (the legislative assembly) to support the Lottery Bill for Baron Montez. History supports the fact that this practice was widespread throughout the company’s dealings. In the investigation that followed the collapse of Compagnie Universelle, one Deputy, Jules Delahaye alleged that one hundred and fifty members of the government had accepted bribes. In the anti-Semitic newspaper La Libre Parole, Baron Jacques de Reinach, the company’s Chief Financial Adviser was accused of bribing twenty-six Deputies (Parker, p. 187-188). The question arises though as to why Montez, who has divested his interests in the canal project, should wish to bribe Deputies to assist in the passage of the Bill? Perhaps Montez is working on behalf of another third party? It remains an outstanding mystery.

    The Panama Canal: Baron de Reinach, one of the promoters of the canal, is forced to swallow poison. Satirical watercolour drawing by H.S. Robert, ca. 1897.

    For today’s reader, this novel carries out a function and enchants us in ways Gunter never intended. Through the novel, as in examining old photographs, we catch a glimpse of life in the latter half of the 19th Century; but that is not all, because the novel is itself an artefact of the time. Artefacts generate a number of dimensions—the selective world of the novel as portrayed by Gunter, where life depicted is conditional on the needs of the story. In the characters’ world, there is no squalor in the streets, no visibly homeless or wretched, no crush of immigrants in New York, no description of the pitiful conditions and state of workers on the Panama Canal, in the streets no dead of Yellow Fever, and in Paris, no detail of the machinations of the French government concerning the canal.

    Then there is the writer’s intent of Gunter himself, the choices of content, and the decisions made, all flavoured by his personal character, knowledge and opinions—all designed to entertain a perceived readership. Lastly, we in the 21st Century, judging by the success of the its publication, have the opportunity to gain an impression of the 19th Century audience. The novel offered readers an escape from the mundane and their toilsome lives, which are not without the common realities of the time. They seek adventure, travel, exotica, true love, a retinue of servants at their beck and call, a life untroubled by irksome necessities like work, sanitary disposal, drawing water, lighting fires and cooking for oneself and others. In their escapism, they may be very similar to readers today.

    As the chapter closes there is a surprise visitor awaiting Harry at the front door. Guess who?

    BOOK 5

    THE HURLY BURLY IN PARIS

    CHAPTER 22

    THE MIND OF A LUNATIC

    The door is closed behind him. Harry says to the old man: “Robert, just get my baggage upstairs; and where is my brother?”

    “Trunks, yes, sir,” replies Robert. Then he turns to Mr. Larchmont, and astonishes him. For he says: “Thank God, you have come, sir! It was on my mind to speak to a lawyer tomorrow!”

    “What’s the matter?” asks Harry. “Anything wrong?” for Robert’s manner is alarming.

    “Yes, sir! Mr. Frank, your brother—he’s sick. I think it’s his head.” The man waves his hand about his honest Breton brow, as if driving away phantoms. “But you had better go in and see him yourself, sir, at once.”

    “Very well,” says Harry. “Is he at dinner?”

    “Oh! he don’t dine much, sir and Miss Jessie and her governess generally eat upstairs, sir.”

    “Where is he?”

    “In the library.”

    And Robert shows Harry Larchmont into a dimly lighted room, where a man is seated before a writing table, his head in his hands.

    Harry cries out: “Frank, I’ve come back from Panama safe! The fever didn’t kill me!”

    “Ah, thank God! Harry! You are come!” answers the brother, rising, and the two wring each other’s hands; though Francois after the manner of the French would kiss.

    “Let me have a little light to look at you,” says the younger one, for the tones of Franc̗ois Leroy Larchmont’s voice have given him a peculiar thrill, they are so nervous yet so muffled; the timbre of the voice seems to be changed. It is as if his tongue were clumsy.

    Lighting the room, Harry Larchmont looks at his brother, and can hardly restrain an exclamation, the shock of his appearance is so great.

    The face that had been round and rather full, has grown thin and drawn. The eyes have a watchful furtive glance, as if looking for something, partly in terror, partly in surprise—a something that is always coming but never comes.

    Before the younger man can speak, the elder breaks out: “Thank God! You’ve come to save Jessie from marrying that infernal villain—that Montez of Panama and Paris!” Then, not waiting for an answer, he jumps on, the words coming from him in jerks: “I’ve had cables from him! Threatening cables!—from New York! cables that alarmed me so much! cables!—that I had all the preparations made for the wedding—the trousseau ordered here—knickknacks and folderols! He is coming tomorrow! But you—thank God!—in time! Henri, my brother! save me from him!” and he shudders as if frightened.

    Przerażenie Wariata (Madman’s terror), self-portrait (1931), Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939)

    “Let me look at his cables,” remarks Harry grimly.

    The other exhibits to him rapidly, three—one from Panama, two from New York. The general tenor of these is for Franc̗ois to make all the preparations for the wedding, that must take place on Montez’ arrival in Paris, though there is a peculiar ambiguous threatening in them.

    “What does he mean by his hints?” asks Harry, and is astounded at the reply.

    His brother suddenly giggles: “Ah, ha! I bribed the deputies for him! The deputies for the Canal Bill! The Lottery Bill! It went through the Bureau of Deputies, a few nights ago! I bribed them! He hints, he absolutely dares to hint, at threatening me with this, the wretch! for doing his work—oh ho! his orders!” Then he shudders: “Henri, protect me!”

    “Certainly!” mutters the younger man, almost too overcome to speak, for there is something in his brother’s manner that makes him fear for his intellect, though he meditates: “Why could I not threaten Montez also? If it is against the law for my brother, it is against the law for him!”

    But as Harry looks on Franc̗ois Leroy Larchmont, who has suddenly begun to tell him of a new opera, he casts this from his mind, speculating: “What jury would believe his evidence?”

    Franc̗ois is never quiet long. He breaks in suddenly:

    “But about this marriage. I have had a plan—a great plan. Within the last three days I have discovered how to postpone the wedding! What do you think I have done? I have made Jessie younger!”

    “Made Jessie younger?”

    “Yes! she is now only eleven!”

    To this Harry returns, his voice very serious: “Where is she?”

    “Oh, upstairs, studying her lessons, I presume. You’ll see her in a moment!” Francois rings the bell, and Robert making his appearance, he commands sternly:

    “Bring the child down!”

    At which, stifling a grin, the servant goes away; but a minute after, reappears with a subdued but frightened giggle, saying: “The child says she won’t come down!”

    “Very well, I’ll see her myself!” answers Harry. “Never mind about coming with me, Frank! You stay here quietly,” for there is an indefinite fear in his mind—a fear of something, he does not know what, as he steps in the hall.

    Noting his face, the servant whispers to him: “Miss Severn is all right! She’s upstairs with her governess, locked in. They’re frightened to death of him!”

    So Harry, going up, raps on the door, and the faint voice of the governess comes faltering through the panels: “Miss Jessie is at her lessons—she can’t be disturbed, M-m-monsieur Franc̗ois.”

    “Never mind whether she’s at her lessons, or not,” cries Harry. “It is I, Harry Larchmont! Open the door!”

    In a second the key is turned in the lock, the bolt slipped, and he finds himself with both the governess and Miss Severn hugging him together, and sobbing: “Thank God, you have come! Thank God!”

    But here he utters a cry of astonishment, and ejaculates: “What’s this? The ballet, or skirt dancers?”

    And Miss Jessie cries: “Good heavens! don’t you know? I’m a child again!”

    “Yes, and a very pretty child!” laughs Harry, for relief has come to him.

    At which the young lady puts on a very blushing face, and says: “Now don’t be awful! No joking! I had to do it! Frank came up three days ago, and frightened me and my governess to death. He said I was a child once more! He had my governess make short dresses for me. He said that would prevent Montez from marrying me so soon! I would be too young!”

    “How dared you do this?” asks Larchmont savagely of the governess.

    The woman bursts out sobbing, and gasps, her nerves having given way: “Wouldn’t you do anything, if he had a pistol in his hands, and said it was the will of God?”

    “But why didn’t you escape from here?” asks Harry, turning to Miss Jessie.

    “How could I go out in these clothes? He took all the rest away! Look at me!” Then she suddenly cries, “No! For heaven’s sake don’t look!” for Harry is obeying her, and turning his eyes upon a babyish but alluring picture. Miss Severn is dressed as a Parisian child of eleven, with very short skirts, with very pink silk stockings and petite slippers, and baby waist with blue knots of ribbon upon her gleaming shoulders and round white arms, and golden hair hanging in one long juvenile pig tail.

    “Then why didn’t your governess go?” mutters Larchmont, stifling a guffaw.

    “She was too frightened to move, so we just locked ourselves in. Please—please don’t laugh at me! I—it’s awful!”

    “And Mrs. Dewitt?”

    “Mrs. Dewitt has been in Switzerland for a week. She will return soon.”

    “We knew you were coming also,” continues Jessie. “We had seen your telegram. We thought it best to await your arrival. It would make such an awful scandal about poor Frank! But, oh,” here her eyes grow frightened, “don’t leave me with him!”

    “How long has this thing been coming on the poor fellow downstairs?”

    “Well, when we came back, Frank was all right, and I had a very pleasant time in society here, but each day, for the last two months, he’s been growing more nervous. I think it’s the threats of that awful man, the Baron Montez, made to him before he left for Panama. Then he has been very busy doing something political, he says; but only three days ago did this peculiar freak come upon him.”

    “You saw Baron Montez when he left for Panama?”

    “Oh, yes, once. He left Paris just as we got here. To please Frank I went down to see him. I—I had to—Frank is frightened to death of him.” Then she whispers “He is making preparations for my wedding. The trousseau is here. The time has been fixed by cable;” next giggles: “Would you like to see the bride’s dress?”

    This is said so carelessly that Larchmont is astonished. He asks: “Did you not fear that Montez might really marry you?”

    “No,” replies the girl, looking with trustful blue eyes into his, with such faith that it gives him a shock. “No, because you had sworn that I should never marry him!”

    Then Larchmont says quietly to the governess: “I will make proper arrangements for Miss Severn so that she can come downstairs with—propriety.”

    At which the girl gives a little affrighted “Oh!” and stands a beautiful and blushing picture.

    From this the young man turns with a sad but stern face, and goes downstairs to see his brother, and coming into the library is greeted with: “Is the child still sulky?”

    “No,” returns Harry, “the child is quiescent.”

    “Ah!” remarks Franc̗ois, contemplatively. Then he suddenly giggles: “She was in a devil of a temper till I kodaked her!”

    “You—did—what?” ejaculates Harry, for the term is a new one.

    “Yes, snapped her in—photographed her—I’ve her picture here. I’m going to send one to Montez.” And Franc̗ois, who is an amateur at everything, produces a carte de visite of Miss Jessie that makes Harry Larchmont, serious as is the situation, guffaw.

    “Would even Montez dare to marry such an awful child as that?” remarks Frank.

    “No. I’m blowed if he would!” returns Harry: for he is looking at the most enfant terrible on record.

    Miss Jessie’s blue eyes are starting out of her head in horror, but have tears in them; her mouth is pouting, but wildly savage; her pigtail is flying out in the breeze; she seems about to fly at the camera and destroy it; in fact, this had been her idea, but Frank had snapped too quickly and too deftly.

    “Wouldn’t that make an artist’s fortune!” remarks Franc̗ois. “I shall ask her to pose for me—you know I daub a little—at least I did before that villain Montez made me walk the floor all night!” Then he moans, “Save me! He’ll put me in prison!”

    Photograph of a girl (1904)

    Meeting Harry’s eyes, Franc̗ois Leroy Larchmont droops his, as his brother says: “There is only one thing to do, Frank! You, yourself, when you think of it, must conclude that I am the only one to protect you from Baron Montez!”

    “Yes,” answers the other, “I have prayed for your coming!”

    “Very well then, in order to save you from the man you fear, I must have the full direction of everything. You must assign your guardianship, under the French law, of Miss Severn, to me. She will assent to it in writing, and at her age, it will be legal.”

    “You—you—” gasps the weak man, “will give me a receipt for Jessie’s property, so that they cannot prosecute me for losing it—a full receipt?”

    “Yes,” says the other quietly, “a full receipt, to save your name!” And he breaks out: “Good heavens! You don’t suppose that I could ever let a child, your ward, lose her property through you! That would be a disgrace upon our family forever. But you must turn me over everything you have.”

    “All right! Only save me from Montez!”

    “Very well!” remarks Harry, “give me your keys!”

    He steps into the hall and says to Robert: “Do you know a notary near here?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Send for him!” But Robert, about to go, suddenly whispers: “Look out for his pistol!”

    “His pistol! Where is it?”

    “He’s got it on, sir,” says the man. “That’s the reason I obey him so quickly.”

    “Has he?” says Larchmont, and stepping back into the library, he remarks: “Frank, I’ve got to go out this evening, after I get through my business with you. I left my revolver in Panama. I have got so used to carrying one, I shall not feel safe without it.”

    “Oh, take mine!” cries his brother, cheerfully, and he hands him a very impressive looking weapon, remarking casually: “I brought it to coerce the governess, but have lately used it upon mice in the cellar. It will slay a mouse at four yards!” Then a sudden and awful tone coming into his voice, which makes Harry very happy he has the pistol in his own hands, he mutters: “Besides, on the wedding day—after the bride was married—I had thoughts——”

    “Thoughts of what?” asks Harry uneasily.

    “Thoughts! thoughts!” says the other. “Just thoughts!”

    “Won’t you come in to dinner?” suggests the younger Larchmont, anxious to cut short this musing of his brother.

    “No, I never dine now. Perpetual Lent with me, mon ami. Perhaps, after all is over, and I have tried everything, I may turn monk! It is well to learn to fast.” Then Franc̗ois’ tone becomes suddenly anxious, and he murmurs: “If I do not do what he tells me, he has threatened to turn me out of here—to turn me into the streets to starve—I—a Larchmont, starve—I—who have never been hungry before! I am educating myself for this.”

    “You need have no fear of that now,” remarks Harry confidently. “Here’s the notary.”

    And that official being shown in shortly thereafter, Francois Leroy Larchmont assigns his guardianship of Miss Severn to Harry; and Harry acknowledges receiving the fortune of the young lady.

    To the first of this it is best to get Jessie’s assent, which she is delighted to give; the notary going up to her to take her signature.

    So coming from this interview, telling Robert to send one of the other servants out for a doctor, and to watch at the door to see his brother does not leave the room, Harry Larchmont goes to dinner, with but very little appetite. He has, however, made arrangements for the restoration of Miss Severn’s wardrobe, and that young lady flits down to him, in a very pretty dignified evening dress, though she sometimes pulls down her skirt as if anxious to make it longer, and once or twice takes a look at her train to be sure it is there. As he eats she proceeds to give him further details of the last three days, some of which would make him laugh, were they not additional evidences that Francois Leroy Larchmont has lost the weak mind he had, through his fears of Baron Montez.

    An hour after this, a distinguished French physician comes, and after examination tells Harry that just at present these peculiar disorders are so ambiguous, he cannot tell whether the disease of his brother will be permanent, or not. He must study the case for a few days.

    “It may be only the nerves—it may be the brain. If the latter, it is probably hopeless! At any event, he must have attendants. He must be watched. He must not be let go out of the house alone. If Mr. Larchmont wishes, he will send him two reliable men.”

    “Very well,” says Harry; “I am much obliged to you, doctor. Do as you suggest.”

    An hour afterwards, two quiet but determined looking men come.

    “Who are these?” asks Francois uneasily.

    “Two secret police to guard you from Baron Montez,” whispers his brother.

    “Ho, ho! Then we have Fernando!” chuckles Frank as the men attend him upstairs.

    Satisfied that his brother will be taken care of, Harry thinks he would like a cigar in the open air.

    The night is a beautiful one. He has been accustomed to open rooms on the Isthmus, and to sea-breezes on the steamer. He thinks he can better meditate upon the awful situation in which he is placed, in the open air. He must turn over several things in his mind. Of course his brother’s signature to the document making him Jessie’s guardian, will legally amount to nothing; still, with her consent, he knows a French court will doubtless transfer the guardianship to him.

    Then he suddenly thinks of the paper that he has signed, receipting for all of this girl’s fortune—a million dollars—five million francs! He is no lunatic. He is liable for all of it!

    He knows that his brother can turn over to him but very little of the orphan’s estate, and he mutters: “I am afraid I have crippled myself! Unless I can force Montez to disgorge, I am now comparatively poor! If I marry, I shall not have wealth enough to retain my position in New York society!”

    Then he communes with himself: “There is but one I want to marry, and if she will have me, we can be happy in a flat! I imagine she was living in one when I first met her!”

    The servants, tired with their duties of the day, have all gone to bed. Harry hesitates to trouble them. He opens the front door himself, to receive another sensation of this night in Paris.

    Almost as his hand is on the door, there is a ring, and as he throws the portal open, he finds himself standing face to face with Louise Minturn—her bosom panting, her eyes bright. She mutters to him: “Thank God, you are here on time!”

    Then she thrusts something into his hand and whispers, a frightened tone in her voice: “That will save your brother’s and his ward’s fortune from Baron Montez! Hold to it, as to your life! It contains the secrets of the man you are to fight against! I think I have saved your fortune, but fear I am pursued by the police!”

    THE SOMETHING IS THE BULKY, BIG POCKETBOOK OF BARON FERNANDO MONTEZ!

    Notes and References

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

    Smith, Fred. R. ‘You Press the Button, We Do the Rest: [,,,] Guide to the newest in the camera bonanza‘, Sports Illustrated, Nov. 1959.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    BOOK 4

    THE STRUGGLE IN PANAMA

    CHAPTER 15

    WINTERBURN’S MUSEUM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Anon. 1902

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A Spanish town turned into a French one!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Ah, has his partner told you?”

    “No, Aguilla never says anything.”

    “Then how do you know?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Your what?” asks Louise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Notes and References

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

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

    Panama Hat: Historia del panama hat

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    CHAPTER 13

    THE BUNDLE OF LETTERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Why not?”

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

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

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

    “Indeed! What did you mean?”

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

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

    “Then why associate with them?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “The whole morning?”

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

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

    “Forgive me!”

    “O-o-oh!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “You have not read them?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Vintage photograph (n.a.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “That is from my grandfather,”says Louise.

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

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

    It reads as follows:

    “Panama, April 15th, 1856.

    “My Darling Mary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “What do you mean?” stammers Miss Minturn.

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

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

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

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

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

    “Your loving mother,

    “Alice Louise Ripley.

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

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

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

    “What do you mean?”

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

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

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

    “He—who?”

    “Señor Fernando Gomez Montez!”

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

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

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

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

    “My aid! How?”

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

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

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

    “Oh, don’t speak of yourself so!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Press photograph (1906). See note.

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

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

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

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

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

    “Why not, if he is a scoundrel?”

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

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

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

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

    “Goodby?”

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

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

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

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

    Notes and References

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

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

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

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

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

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 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