After Catesby died (Abigail’s mind shied—as it always did—at the dreadful words “took his own life”), Leona did not linger long. Abigail believed her daughter Leona had been too disappointed in life to want more of it.
The train swayed, the stove hissed and rattled. One could be suffocated by the stove or open the window and be suffocated by cinders.
The War had taken Abigail’s daughter and son-in-law, maimed her son Duncan, and reduced Stratford’s rich competence to poverty. Only Eben Barnwell’s mortgage money kept the Gatewoods from bankruptcy. Abigail’s niece Pauline had resumed correspondence with the man. Before the War Eben Barnwell would have been beneath the Gatewoods’ notice.
Firmly, Abigail set these realities aside in favor of happier thoughts. Duncan and Sallie had moved into Molly Semple’s Richmond house. Duncan was so busy with the legislature! And a new grandson: Catesby Gatewood! Abigail daydreamed about Stratford’s grand Christmases, when her house glowed with warmth and hospitality. She recalled Sabbaths at SunRise Chapel; servants in the garret upstairs, the Gatewoods in the sanctuary below. How the coloreds could sing!
As the train chugged toward Richmond, Abigail’s fingers automatically counted stitches in her grandson’s tiny socks.
If Abigail Gatewood readily switched onto the well-worn tracks of reverie, avoiding present woes in favor of a pleasanter past, who can condemn her?
CHAPTER 23
TERRAPIN À LA DELMONICO
The diamondback Chesapeake terrapins are considered the best. They must be freshly caught. Long Island terrapins are also much liked by epicures, some averring that they are as fine as the Chesapeake, but this is not a fact.
Drop the terrapins in sufficient tepid water to allow them to swim, and leave them thus for half an hour, then change the water several times and wash them well. Scald by plunging them into boiling water, and take them out as quickly as the skin (a small white skin on the head and feet) can be removed with a cloth, then put them to cook in water without any salt or seasoning for thirty to forty-five minutes. Press the feet meat between the fingers and if it yields easily, they are ready. Let them get cold, cut off the nails, then break the shell on the flat side; detach this shell from the meats, empty out all the insides found in the upper shell, suppressing the entrails and lights, and carefully removing the gallbladder from the liver, then place the liver in cold water. Remove the white inside muscles as well as the head and tail; separate the legs at their joints and divide into inch-and-a-quarter pieces—the lights, entrails, head, tail, heart, claws, muscles, and gallbladder to be thrown away. Lay the terrapin in a saucepan with its eggs and liver cut in thin slices, season with salt, black pepper, and cayenne, and cover with sufficient water to attain to the height of the terrapin, then let boil and finish the cooking in a slow oven for twenty or thirty minutes. Remove from heat. For each quart of broth, add a half pint of cream, reduce to half, season with salt and cayenne pepper, thicken with five raw eggs diluted with half a pint of cream, and two ounces of fresh butter, toss the terrapin while adding the thickening; this must not boil, finishing with half a gill of very good sherry wine or madeira. The sauce should be thick and served very hot.
PAULINE BYRD EXCLAIMED, “MANHATTAN IS A SUBLIME PROSPECT!”
Cousin Molly Semple asked, “What is that frightful stench?”
“It is sublime, isn’t it?” Eben Barnwell exulted.
Pointedly, Molly Semple coughed into her handkerchief and jutted a forefinger at smokestacks on the Brooklyn shore.
“That’s Pratt’s. Pratt refines Pennsylvania petroleum. They say he’s made five million.”
Pauline enthused, “I did not know the world contained so many ships! Why, the whole world is here.”
The Brooklyn ferry hooted past great sailing vessels, shouldering aside steam tugs, fishing smacks, and lighters.
“Isn’t it, though!” Eben was as proud as if New York City were his invention.
Eben Barnwell’s invitation had reached grieving Stratford like a gift from heaven. Samuel Gatewood wandered his demesne in a stupor, closeting himself every evening with a demijohn and not reappearing until the next noon, unshaven, red-eyed, and reeking. Sometimes, in the midst of her duties, Molly Semple was overwhelmed. She’d be sweeping or churning and she’d weep until she couldn’t distinguish butter from buttermilk.
Pauline was glad to escape Stratford’s troubles for a time.
Jack the Driver met General Mahone’s mounting demands for ties and twenty-foot by twenty-four-inch bridge timbers. Although the General’s payments were regular now, he was a year in arrears.
Stratford’s mill workers were negroes. Timber cutters and the teamsters who hauled logs to the mill and sawn lumber to the railhead were white men working under Billy Hansel. Hansel had been a slave patroller before the War and Jack called him “Mr. Bill,” while Hansel called Jack, “Jack.”
Cousin Molly told Samuel they must refuse Barnwell’s invitation, that an unmarried young woman visiting a yankee bachelor might be misunderstood, but Samuel insisted she go. “Abigail would have wanted it. October fourteenth it was, Sunday, October fourteenth, eighteen and thirty-eight, we resolved upon matrimony. What children we were! I promised Abigail that one day we would visit England. Abigail loved reading about London! How she admired London fashions! Abigail and I never went.” Samuel’s mouth trembled. “There was always too much to do.”
Franky’s marriage, motherhood, and her husband Jack’s elevation to deacon of the Warm Springs Baptist Church had transmogrified a disreputable kitten into a gratified cat. Franky’s brisk step had slowed and she’d become sedate. “Mrs. Mitchell,” Molly advised her, “while I’m away, you’ll be in charge of Stratford House. Mr. Samuel will want looking after. Please cook his favorite dishes. Do encourage him to eat.”
After she wished them safe journeying, Mrs. Mitchell warned that Lucifer himself resided in New York City and Miss Molly and Miss Pauline should beware his snares.
On a bright July afternoon Sallie Gatewood met Pauline and Molly at Richmond’s Virginia Central depot. Duncan was away on General Mahone’s business.
Pauline wished to see sites associated with the Confederacy: its office buildings, statehouse, and the mansion where, through so many tribulations, President Davis had made his home. The three ladies paid their respects to flower-bedecked Confederate graves in Hollywood Cemetery.
After supper Pauline retired, and Cousin Molly and Sallie—two old friends—took sherry in the parlor. Hard scrubbing had restored the room to its prewar cheerfulness. Its heart-pine floors glowed and Sallie had rescued an ancient Aubusson from the attic. A handsome swirl of blue and lavender; the carpet’s moth-damaged corner was under the coal bucket.
“My dear,” Molly said, “you’ve brought my old house back to life. And Aunt Opal—hasn’t baby Catesby improved Opal’s disposition?”
“She spoils him terribly!” Sallie mused. “I believe Aunt Opal and Abigail must have quarreled before the accident; Aunt Opal acted as guilty as if she’d caused the derailment. So long as poor Abigail survived, Opal wouldn’t leave her, nor would she let another do for her.”
“Oh, my dear . . .”
After tears were shed, Sallie dabbed her eyes, blew her nose, and took a deep breath. “I’ve news, Molly, I could not trust to anyone but you. My Duncan, he, well . . . in the beginning, the laudanum salved his pain, but then . . .”
Molly simply listened.
“Then it, the laudanum, became Duncan’s master. Duncan performed the duties his employer demanded and he never fell out of temper with me, but Molly . . . it was as if my living, breathing husband had been swapped for one of Madame Tussaud’s wax replicas. Duncan’s opium delusions were so vivid he frequently—while waking—even whilst conversing with me in this very room—my husband drifted away. Even now, I shudder to recall his remote, indifferent gaze.”
After visiting Marguerite Omodundru, Sallie had resolved to bring matters to a head, and the next morni
ng, before Duncan took his first dose, she confronted him.
Duncan countered with complaints about his work. He said that respectable men avoided private meetings with “the notorious Major Gatewood” lest their own reputations suffer. He said, “The Assembly has passed Mahone’s bill and General Mahone has shaken my hand on it. That is as close as Mahone will come to those hands I have had to shake!”
Sallie said, “Duncan, I have loved you because you were hopeful and brave. Though I feared for you, I was proud of you. I would rather have had you dead than a coward.”
“So, Sallie, are you proud of me now?”
She resumed tenderly, “Duncan, I regret your present indifference to our marital relations. Some say a woman should disdain conjugal duties, but I married a man, Duncan, and our relations were my delight.”
Her candor stripped him of pretense. “Dear God.” Eyes brimming, Duncan knelt at his wife’s feet. “I will change. Please God, I will!”
Now Sallie told Molly Semple Duncan had resolved to quit laudanum and had found a Philadelphia physician who had success curing the opium craving.
“Oh, my dear. I am so glad for you.”
“There! Now I have said it! Thank you, dear Molly, for listening to me. When I lost my Duncan to laudanum, I lost my dearest listener.”
NOON SHARP the next day, Molly Semple and Pauline boarded a James River lighter, which conveyed them to their deep-water steamer.
Though young Pauline enjoyed the voyage, Molly Semple was afflicted by seafarer’s complaint, and as Pauline was admiring the ever-changing coastline from the deck her chaperone stayed below.
Hence, as they entered New York Harbor and Pauline enthused about “billowing white sails,” “sailors in the rigging like human beads on strings,” and et cetera, an exhausted, queasy Molly Semple saw little to approve.
Eben Barnwell bounded aboard and before they could protest he’d collected the ladies and their baggage. Once aboard the ferry, Eben repeated his invitation to stay in his home.
“Two unmarried women in a bachelor’s domicile? My dear sir!”
“Miss Semple, I’ll warrant Manhattanites wouldn’t give it a thought.”
“As you will recall, Mr. Barnwell, we are not Manhattanites. We are Virginia rustics. We’ve secured accommodations at the St. Nicholas. My Richmond connections assured me it is respectable.”
THE RIVER’S STENCH was overwhelming and the flotsam best ignored but Molly’s spirits lifted as the ferry approached the Fulton Street slip. The lower deck teemed with men and women of every class and dress. Immigrants called to one other in a perfect babble of languages.
The trio were seated in Eben’s carriage before the ferry docked and when the gate opened, their driver whipped his steeds as if at a starter’s gun. Other carriages, wagons, beer wagons, and drays had a similar notion, but despite rude cries and gestures, no driver gained any particular advantage.
Clopping along Fulton Street, Eben Barnwell pointed out the newspaper publishers: the New World, the Democratic Review, the Literary World . . .
“So many!” Pauline exclaimed.
“Why, I’ll say there are. That’s the Herald there. Mr. Barnum’s museum had that corner until it burned. One of Barnum’s curiosities, a whale, blocked Broadway for two days.”
“Is that why we proceed so slowly?” Cousin Molly inquired sweetly. “Are we impeded by roasted cetaceans?”
“Oh.” Eben jammed his fingers into his waistcoat pockets. “It’s always slow downtown.” He brightened. “Everyone wants to be here and there ain’t room for everyone.”
Pauline said, “At Stratford months pass without strangers. How can you stand it, Mr. Barnwell—all these strangers? Do you recognize anyone?”
Eben thumped the roof with his walking stick. “Flynn, are you awake? Pick up their heels, man!
“It’s a big old place, all right. In this city, a man earns his right to be known. Why, everybody knows Jay Cooke, and Commodore Vanderbilt, and Fisk, and Boss Tweed. Everybody knows Morgan and Jay Gould.” He pointed, “That’s Niblo’s Gardens,” he said. “Niblo’s coryphees play to packed houses.”
“What is a ‘coryphee’?” Molly inquired.
“A dancing girl.” Eben coughed. “Uh . . . Arabian.”
“Arabian? Are these Arabian women decently clothed?”
“Ah . . .”
“Have you attended these uplifting performances?”
“Miss Semple, this is Manhattan. The most influential gentlemen in the city attend these performances.”
“And in Manhattan, they are called ‘gentlemen’?”
Although Madison Square’s west side was unfashionable (its townhouses had been converted to rooming houses and apartments), the east side (Eben Barnwell assured them) was tip-top.
As they drew up at the curb, Eben exclaimed, “Here we are! Eben Barnwell’s humble home!” and before coachman Flynn could climb down from his box, Eben had their door open. “Have a care where you step, ladies! The street cleaners have not been by this morning!”
Barnwell’s home was severely rectangular and fronted the square behind a stern reddish stone facade. Barnwell clattered his door knocker, greeted his maid, and returned her curtsy with such a bow she blushed in confusion. Entering, Eben Barnwell announced he had paid “fifty” for the house. “I ’spose it’s worth more now.” He named his servants (besides Flynn and Mary, the housemaid, he employed Bridget Reilly as cook). Eben directed his guests’ attention to the “pièce de résistance” (whose installation was completed at midnight last night thanks to Eben’s frantic pleas and lavish bribes): “It is Croton water. Pure as a maiden’s fancy.”
A sullen stone cherub overlooked a marble basin into which he spewed water. The fountain apparatus occupied so much of Eben’s modest foyer his visitors were splashed.
“Italian workmen,” Eben informed the ladies. “The sculptor is descended from Michelangelo! Isn’t it splendid!” On a more practical note he added, “You can turn it off with a valve in the coal cellar.”
“Have you an umbrella?” Cousin Molly inquired.
Eben Barnwell’s formal parlor was furnished with an elaborately carved sideboard and armchairs in green and red velvet. The brocade drapes were open wide and when Cousin Molly asked they be closed, he said, “Don’t you like to look out at humanity, Miss Semple?”
“Sometimes,” she replied. “But there are so many here.”
The seascape which hung over the mantel was so dark with aged, crazed varnish, one couldn’t determine whether the represented vessels were steam or sail. Eben laughed. “It’s awful, isn’t it? But the dealer I had it from said it was ‘an excellent example,’ that Morgan himself owned one by the same artist, and that the price had been reduced. Apparently I am a man dealers find agreeable.”
“Mr. Barnwell, you are a surprising young man.”
“Miss Semple, I am merely the son of a poor Vermont peddler.”
“Yes, yes. You’ve told us that. But exactly who are you?”
“Molly!”
“As your kinswoman, dear, it is my duty to ask disagreeable questions.”
Eben smiled and shrugged helplessly.
Molly Semple refused Mr. Barnwell’s supper invitation but accepted his coach, which conveyed the women uptown to the St. Nicholas Hotel, a block-long structure. Their luggage was passed from coachman to porter to the desk clerk, who assigned their room and produced a key. The porter then escorted the ladies to a novel device: inside a wood-paneled closet, a boy stood at attention beside a hawser which passed through a circular hole in the ceiling and a hole in the floor. “Think of it, madames,” the porter suggested, “as a little parlor, going up and down by machinery.”
After the trio got in, the boy tugged on the rope, and the lobby floor receded as the closet ascended. They passed the mezzanine and second floor to debark safely on the third, where the porter’s assurance that the hotel had stairs as well as this “elevator” relieved Molly Semple.
&n
bsp; Their small neat room overlooked bustling Broadway. Down the hall in the bathing chamber, valves delivered hot water, and after dismissing reservations about the hygiene of the strangers who might have used the tub previously, Cousin Molly bathed.
Affixed to the wall above a porcelain stool was a rectangular wooden tank from which a brass chain descended to a pull.
Cousin Molly had read about these “water closets” but had never seen one.
As they dressed for supper, Pauline asked about it.
The older woman whispered, “It produces a draft on one’s underparts.”
SUNDAY, COUSIN MOLLY had thought to attend Presbyterian services, but Eben Barnwell had other plans. “Dr. Beecher is the most celebrated preacher in America. Beecher speaks to the modern Christian.”
To Beecher’s Brooklyn tabernacle they went.
Pauline felt agreeably daring. Unfamiliar with Congregationalism’s ten-ets, Pauline supposed that liberal creed to be somewhere east of Christianity, though not so far east as Muhammadism.
“Is there a funeral?” Cousin Molly whispered.
“No, no. Beecher loves flowers. Every Sunday is springtime in Beecher’s church.”
Pauline’s Presbyterian God was impatient with human frailty. Beecher’s church was so sunny! How everybody smiled!
When Beecher stepped into the pulpit his big face was sallow and his large eyes were half closed under heavy lids. He announced a hymn, offered a languid prayer, announced another hymn, another prayer.
But when he began his sermon, his voice, which had been flat as a finishing iron, became lyrical and his face began to glow. “A man has a right to stimulate himself for right purpose. All men recognize this need in regard to business, politics, social life—but if needful there, where the senses and selfishness have much influence, how much more needful when we rise into the realm of moral and spiritual things?”