The Gilded Age

14

High Tea with Miss Anthony

When Zhu and Daniel step down from the brougham at Market and Powell and stroll to the entrance of the magnificent Baldwin Hotel, Zhu sees Jessie Malone walking into the lobby. Actually, Jessie isn’t walking. She is being alternately led, pushed, pulled, and yanked by Madame De Cassin and a smiling Mariah. Mariah, smiling? Zhu can’t remember the last time she saw Mariah smile. Or if she’s ever seen Mariah smile.

“Jar me,” Jessie complains to her bullying companions. “If women go into politics, they’ll wind up as jackassed as men.”

“You don’t like some man telling you how to run your business, now do you, Miss Malone?” Madame De Cassin says. As always, the spiritualist wears her dashing black riding habit and boots.

“So why do you tolerate some man deciding the laws governing your life?” Mariah says. She looks like a totally different person. Zhu blinks, wary, fearful for a moment she’ll suddenly see all reality change and Mariah will be unsmiling and stern in her customary maid’s uniform. When Zhu looks again, though, Mariah is still smiling and still wearing a blue French-cut jacket with burgundy silk braid and fancy geegaws like military decorations, matching blue button boots, a blue Caroline hat, and a sweeping burgundy skirt.

“We’ll all wind up in Napa Asylum,” Jessie declares. “We’ll all start a-smokin’ them vile cigars and a-growin’ them billy goat beards.”

“Well, hello, Miss Wong,” Mariah calls out. “And Mr. Watkins, good to see you up and about. We have all been quite worried about you.”

“You have?” Daniel says incredulously.

Zhu smiles. She’s overhead his little altercations with Mariah many, many times.

“We’re delighted that you’re coming to the meeting,” Madame De Cassin says. “We welcome gentlemen, of course, but you’ll have to keep your trap shut.”

“Meeting?” Daniel says, glancing at Zhu, his eyebrows raised. “Trap shut?”

“The meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association,” Mariah says proudly. “I have been attending the meetings of our local chapter for some years now.”

“And I’m the one who first persuaded Mariah to attend,” Madame De Cassin says. “We spiritualist brothers and sisters support woman suffrage, along with equal opportunities for all of our American brothers and sisters. And we despise cruelty to the humble beasts among us.”

“You do?” Daniel says, and Zhu returns his look of amazement. She never knew that nineteenth century spiritualists were in the forefront of the equal opportunity movement and the hue and cry against cruelty to animals. She knows now.

“Most certainly,” Madame De Cassin says. “Our souls are all equal in the Summerland.”

Jessie turns to the spiritualist, her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Is that so?”

“Yes, indeed,” Madame De Cassin says.

“So that’s where our Mariah was always sneaking off to,” Daniel whispers to Zhu.

“Miss Anthony herself has honored our town with a visit to raise support for the state referendum,” Madame De Cassin adds.

“What referendum is that?” Zhu says.

“The one that shall pass a constitutional amendment giving women the vote in California,” Mariah says, beaming with excitement.

“Indeed, the measure will be on the ballot this November,” Madame De Cassin says. “You must persuade your gentlemen friends to vote for it, Mr. Watkins.”

“Perhaps I will,” he replies with a diplomatic diffidence that suggests to Zhu he has no intention of doing any such thing. Or maybe not. Maybe she’s misjudging him again.

“And who is this Miss Anthony?” Zhu says, aware of the spiritualist’s tone of awe when she speaks her name.

“Why, Susan B. Anthony, Miss Wong,” Mariah says. “President of our association.”

“Mother of God,” Jessie moans, “we’ll all start lyin’ and cheatin’ and stealin’ just like men. We’ll all start dishonorin’ the precious sanctity of the family.”

“Miss Malone,” Madame De Cassin says, “you do all of that now.”

Jessie is indignant. “I do not lie, cheat, or steal!”

Zhu and Daniel join the throng of women sweeping into a downstairs salon, which is set with dining tables and chairs. The sideboard offers hot tea, cream, sugar, scones, bread pudding, candied violets, and a large Lady Baltimore cake shaped like a shamrock and iced with green butter frosting.

“What, no champagne?” Jessie complains.

“Cake and no champagne,” Daniel whispers to Zhu. “Positively barbaric.”

“The temperance movement supports woman suffrage, too, doesn’t it?” Zhu says, recalling the signs and demonstrations she’s witnessed all over San Francisco. She tries a candied violet. The vile thing tastes just exactly like purple sugar. “They wouldn’t approve of champagne or sherry at this high tea, would they?”

“Quite right,” Madame De Cassin says, helping herself to tea and a scone. She licks her lips. Zhu gets the impression that the spiritualist wouldn’t mind a nip of sherry with her tea, herself. “However! Miss Anthony has asked the WCTU and other temperance interests not to meet in California this year as they’d planned. The liquor interests are keen on defeating the woman suffrage referendum. They’ve invested a bundle of money into the campaign against it.”

“The liquor interests,” says Mariah scornfully, “exploit the friendship between temperance and woman suffrage every chance they get. What drinking man who beats his wife and whose wife hates his habit wants to let her have a say-so in the government? Let alone a vote to go dry?”

She aims an evil look at Daniel, who fusses with the lace on Zhu’s cuff. Hmm. How will he vote? Zhu wonders.

She finds a table for her and Daniel, helps him sit. He’s still so frail and weak. She hurries to the sideboard and fixes up a tray of tea and scones and bread pudding. Jessie, Madame De Cassin, and Mariah join them.

Now a plump young blond woman plunks her tea things on the table and sits next to her.

Zhu stares, disbelieving. What wonderful new reality has she found herself in, now that she didn’t die on the Chinese New Year? Maybe living in a Closed Time Loop won’t be so bad, after all.

“Li’l Lucy? Is that really you?”

“Just Lucy is fine, Miss Zhu.” Lucy looks radiant and fresh, with neatly combed yellow hair, a scrubbed face, and a high-collared gray cotton dress. “I met this wonderful fellow, a business man in shipping, not a sailor. He loved me at first sight--though what a dreadful sight I was! He helped me kick the booze and the dope. I do declare, Miss Wong, I shall never go back to the sportin’ life.” She giggles, and it’s the same old giggle, only the girlishness is real. She touches Zhu’s arm. “We got married last week--can you imagine?—and bought a house in the Western Addition. Oh, it’s a very small house and the neighborhood is still so rough. But I do believe Randolph and I will make a go of it.” She glances enviously at Zhu’s belly. “With luck, I’ll look just like you come autumn.”

As Zhu exclaims over Lucy’s good fortune and congratulates her, a tiny, tightly corseted and veiled lady sits tentatively beside Mariah. Fanny Spiggot smiles nervously at the assembled company, avoiding Daniel’s eyes.

Mariah says, “Welcome, sister,” and smiles. Though she switches her handbag to her other arm.

Now a tall, elegant lady in a pompadour thickly streaked with white sweeps into the salon and seats herself beside Lucy. “Good afternoon, ladies,” Donaldina Cameron says with a dour look at Jessie and Zhu. She hesitates, clearly pondering whether she should be seen in such questionable company, but the other tables have all been filled up with attendees. Cameron shrugs—Zhu knows from her own experience this proper lady is much tougher than she looks—then studies Daniel’s face for a long moment. “Have we met before, sir?”

Zhu glances at Daniel as he coughs into his napkin. “I believe you must be mistaken, miss,” he says. Then whispers in Zhu’s ear in an insinuating tone, “Her special friends call her Dolly.”

Zhu punches his arm. “Yeah, and how would you know?”

He chuckles. “Never you mind. That was a long time ago.”

Suddenly Mariah cries out and leaps to her feet. She ushers a stately woman into their midst, bidding her to sit in the last seat available at their table.

The stately woman joins them. White hair pulled back in a severe bun, a pince-nez planted on her eagle’s beak of a nose, her stern face ravaged by sun and by age, her stout figure clothed in stiff black silk—everyone hushes at the sight of her. But despite her austere appearance, the woman’s eyes sparkle with warmth, deep compassion, and a keen intelligence.

Zhu catches her breath. Susan B. Anthony is a formidable woman, but her evident love for her fellow women is the most striking thing about her. Miss Anthony studies everyone at the table, one by one, never losing her polite smile. But her assessment of each flashes subtly across her stern face.

Zhu glances around at their table, too. Okay. A notorious Irish madam getting on in her years. A young German former hooker. A cockney pickpocket still plying her trade, though probably not as skillful at it since she’s getting on in her years. A French spiritualist who conducts fake séances and soaks her clientele for money over their grief and guilt. A Scotch missionary who does good works, yes, and also presses her rescued child captives into righteous hard labor. And a Chinese bookkeeper. That would be her. A Chinese bookkeeper from six centuries in the future who is pregnant by and unmarried to the young American gentleman seated next to her who is a recovering drug and alcohol addict.

What a motley crew! Zhu has no doubt that Miss Anthony, with her penetrating eye, intuits much of what the people seated at this table are all about. Even Zhu, from six hundred years in the future.

“Sure and we’ll all be growin’ them smelly mustaches,” Jessie says, with a tart look at Miss Anthony’s plain face and stout figure. Jessie is up to her usual escapades. Today she’s resplendent in a tightly corseted green silk gown, enormous Colombian emeralds draped around her neck, dangling over her décolleté, and decorating her wrists and her fingers. There will of course be a bash for Saint Paddy’s Day at the Mansion tonight, and Jessie will reign over the celebration. Chong will surely bake rye bread, make his own mustard, and cook up a wonderful corned beef platter with all the trimmings. She sniffs. “As sure as I’m Miss Jessie Malone, the biz is the biz, and I’m advisin’ you to watch out for this political biz.”

“Indeed.” Miss Anthony turns to her quizzically. “Are you a working woman, Miss Malone?”

“Hmph! You bet!” Jessie jabs her elbow into Mariah’s ribs. Mariah ignores the jab, and Zhu wonders how many times Mariah has ignored Jessie’s intrusive elbow.

“May I ask what line of work you are in?” Miss Anthony inquires, taking the cup of tea Madame De Cassin has served her.

“I own whorehouses, Miss Anthony. A high-class parlor and some lousy cribs.” Jessie tosses her blond curls defiantly, eagerly seeking a shocked look on Miss Anthony’s craggy face. “I’m what they call a madam.” She raises her voice in case the elderly suffragist is hard of hearing. “A whore, Miss Anthony. They call me the Queen of the Underworld.”

Zhu coughs, and everyone else at the table coughs, cringes, or blushes. But no shocked look appears on Miss Anthony’ face. On the contrary, she leans forward, her eyes sparkling with interest. “And how, may I ask, did you get started in that line of work?”

Donaldina Cameron rolls her eyes, Madame De Cassin pats Cameron’s arm sympathetically, Lucy nervously sips her tea, Mariah gazes stonily into the distance, and Daniel circles his arm around Zhu’s shoulders protectively. No one is joking. Not now.

“Line of work! The biz is the biz.” Jessie brays with laughter. “You really want to hear my pitiful sob story, Miss Anthony?”

“Indeed I do!”

Jessie pulls a flask from her purse, uncorks it, knocks back a swallow. Zhu smells expensive brandy.

“Once upon a time, I was a little girl,” she begins sarcastically.

But the table hushes, the meeting seems to hush all around them, too, and Jessie’s eyes glisten.

Oh! Zhu thinks, holding her breath. The story I’ve never heard.

“Once upon a time, I was a little girl with a littler girl to take care of. My sweet innocent Rachael was younger by a year and a half, but Mum liked to say we was twins ‘cause we looked so much alike. ‘My sweet angels,’ Mum called us. ‘My little mermaids.’ We lived at Lily Lake on the Oregon side of the border. Sure and we swam in that lake every chance we got from the time we could stand up and walk. That’s the way I thought of us. We walked, we swam, we ate, we slept, Rachael and me. Like two sides of a coin. Like one person, you might say.” Jessie sighs. “She may have been younger, but she was wilder and stronger. Rachael could hold her breath and dive down deep and swim halfway across the lake under the water. Her skinny arms and legs a-pumpin’ like a frog. And Mum and me, we’d get scared. ‘Rachael, Rachael,’ we’d call and hug each other. ‘Mother of God, she ain’t comin’ up this time, Mum,’ says I and cried. And then she would. She would just pop up from the water, gasping and laughing, and wipe the water from her eyes. ‘You a-cryin’ for me, Jessie, you silly girl? You thought I ain’t comin’ up this time? Huh? Did ya?’”

“And then Mum died, didn’t she?” Miss Anthony says.

Jessie nods, surprised that the suffragist is following her story. “The fever took many a soul that winter. It’s a wonder Rachael and I didn’t up and die, too. Pater was a smithy, that’s how I get my special touch with the nags. Pater’s business had been slow, the house was an ice box, and he and Mum both caught the fever and died. I was ten years of age, Rachael eight going on nine. There must have been some money, you know? Pater owned our house and our stables, least as far as I knew. But a lawyer came to settle their accounts and sent me and Rachael to an orphanage in Portland. Maybe some money went with us for our keep, I don’t know. All I know is we never saw one red cent of it.

“Sure and we hated that place! I took it into my head that the orphanage had murdered Mum and Pater. That Mum and Pater would never have gone off and left me and Rachael alone without a penny.” Jessie pulls from her flask. “So we turned bad. We ran away from that place every chance we got. There’s a great big ol’ river winding through Portland, and down to the river we’d go to swim. Oh! How we missed our Lily Lake.

“One hot summer we’d run away to swim, and Rachael was a-swimmin’ underwater the way she did, divin’ down and breachin’ up and spoutin’ water from her mouth. Kickin’ up her legs, sassy like. Showin’ off she was. And me a-cryin’ and a-wringin’ my hands. Beggin’ her to come up, don’t drown! My sweet innocent Rachael, she was all I had left in the world.

“Suddenly a strange gentleman with silver hair stood beside me on the riverbank.

“I was never shy, but as I stood dripping wet in my cotton shift, I could see how his black eyes looked me up and down. I think that must have been the first time I got a notion about the lust of men. I remember how I found my crumpled dress on the riverbank and clutched it to myself. As though a dusty piece of cotton could hide my body from his eyes.

“But it wasn’t me he wanted most, he wanted Rachael. He made small talk, all polite. ‘Can you swim, too?’ says he. ‘Sure I can,’ says I, all boastful. ‘Like a mermaid.’ I got real mad when I cottoned on that it was Rachael who had grabbed his eye. ‘We grew up at Lily Lake. We swum like mermaids before we could walk.’

“’Mermaids,’ says he. ‘How charming.’

“Like a damn fool, I spilled our whole story. ‘Orphans?’ says he. ‘Would you like me to spring you and your sister loose of that orphanage?’ ‘How?’ says I. ‘Come with me,’ says he. ‘I own a circus.’”

“Oh, my! You joined the circus, Miss Malone?” Lucy exclaims.

“But that’s wonderful!” Zhu says. After her skipparents abandoned her and she went to live at the barracks, Zhu often fantasized about just such an escape from the cruelties of her young life. Run off and join the circus!

Jessie smiles wanly. “What seems wonderful ain’t always so wonderful, missy.”

“Sure and we joined the circus, Rachael and me. Mr. Girabaldi—for he was the silver-haired gent, of course—billed us as ‘The Water Princesses. See the Little Living Mermaids!’ Rachael at nine was not so little, anymore. She shot up taller than me. And at eleven going on twelve, I was not so little, either. After the cheap grease and grits Mr. Girabaldi fed us, I was developin’ my bosom and hips, you bet. Neither of us was such little girls anymore.

“Oh, but you should have seen our act! Mr. Girabaldi dressed us in daring silver and green sateen bathing suits. He had a glass tank made, it was as big as a whole room. And he filled that tank with water, and tinted the water blue, and in we’d slip, the Living Mermaids. Sure and I could hold my breath underwater, but Rachael was the best. She would spin, she would roll, she would turn loop-the-loops. Oh, was we grand! The audience loved us.”

“Then you must have made a lot of money,” Miss Anthony says.

“Hmph! Mr. Girabaldi made a lot of money and kept most of it for himself.”

“I thought so,” Miss Anthony says.

Jessie dabs at her eyes with her fingertips, and Miss Anthony hands her a napkin.

“We traveled all over the West in a horse-and-wagon caravan. Mr. Girabaldi didn’t care about us like our Pater, but he fed us and clothed us and gave us our own little wagon and a big gray gelding. The company was respectful like. I had a sweetheart, the son of an acrobat. Rachael didn’t give a hoot about boys at that time. And then everything changed.

“We toured through San Francisco, and a lady named Miss Hester saw our act and bribed her way backstage. Sure and wasn’t she agog over us. ‘Mermaids,’ says Miss Hester as she dried Rachael’s hair with a thick cotton towel. ‘So beautiful.’ We both took to her. I suppose we was missing our Mum, all the fussin’ and such. Miss Hester started comin’ to see us every night. She brought us little gifts, chocolate and fancy things to eat. She bought me my first diamond. A silly worthless chip it was, but I thought it was the queen’s own jewel.”

“And this Miss Hester,” Miss Anthony interrupts, “she was a madam, was she not?”

“Sure and she owned a parlor on Terrific Street. A class joint,” Jessie says with a toss of her curls. “One night after the show, she asked us out to dinner. No, she didn’t take us to her parlor, not at first. She took us to the Poodle Dog. The Dog was such a naughty place at that time, them Snob Hill ladies wouldn’t be caught dead there, not even on the first floor. Miss Hester took us to a suite on the wicked third floor. I was thirteen by then, Rachael going on twelve, as skinny as a stick but developing her bosom. After the circus, we was not stupid chits. Still, we was pretty young kids, and the circus folk had coddled us. We was the Little Mermaids.

“We did not expect to find several fine gentlemen waiting for us in that suite on the third floor. Gentlemen who wanted to meet the Little Mermaids. Who wanted to see us perform. In private, you see. One Mr. Heald, a young up-and-comer in town, had taken it upon himself to build a tank. A glass tank like the one we swam in for our act, only not quite so large. He had the water tinted blue and everything. And Miss Hester urged us—no, she insisted—that we perform as true mermaids do. Without our green and silver sateen bathing suits.”

“So you swam in the nude for those men, you and Rachael?” Miss Anthony asks. “And you went to work for Miss Hester? You were eleven and thirteen?”

Jessie nods. And Miss Anthony nods as if she’s heard Jessie’s story a thousand times before. “Ah,” Donaldina says softly and aims a look of deep sympathy at Jessie. Everyone at the table does. Zhu doesn’t want to speak up, doesn’t want to say that Jessie’s story, or something like Jessie’s story, will be told in the future by a million children as the centuries pass.

“Sure and Miss Hester tricked us out,” Jessie says wearily. “She set up a tank in her Terrific Street parlor and dyed the water blue. After our act, we went upstairs with the best gentlemen in town. The toast of San Francisco, we was. Made money for Miss Hester and also for ourselves, so that seemed all right. I learned most of what I know about the biz before I blew out fifteen candles on my birthday cake. I learned the value of money young, so I didn’t blow it in. I started a bank account, bought real estate.”

“But Rachael is in the Summerland, is she not, Miss Malone?” says Madame De Cassin. “She’s the one you always summon. She’s the one who always comes to you.”

Jessie dabs at her eyes with the napkin, and Zhu holds her breath.

“She was so beautiful at fourteen. My sweet innocent Rachael, the highest paid sportin’ gal in town. Sure and she was wicked. She loved to pit her gentlemen one against another. She loved to make them jealous the way she loved to make me worry when she swam at Lily Lake. When I warned her that her games would come to no good, she only laughed and said, ‘Make ‘em pay, darlin’, make ‘em pay.’ She wanted more than gold, she wanted passion. She made a horse race out of it. Who would come a-callin’ on Sunday morning before church. Who would bring her the best diamonds. Who would surprise her with a mare or a sailboat or a dress from Paris.” Jessie frowns, pulls at her flask. “I curse the day that Captain Franklin Morrisey blew into town. He’d served under General Grant when he was but a boy. A fightin’ cock, that one. He’d gambled his way across the West, played poker in Tombstone, killed two men in Cheyenne. Still proud and handsome by the time he got to San Francisco, but getting on in his years. No longer such a young man, and wantin’ a wife equal to his passion.

“He went sweet for Rachael the moment he laid his eyes on her and demanded her hand, in spite of her reputation. She would have none of it. Wild as a cat she was. What would Rachael do, a married woman? Cook and clean and bear Morrisey’s babies? Nah, she’d acquired a taste for the sportin’ life. One night she consented to dine with him at the Poodle Dog. A third-floor suite, plenty of whiskey and champagne. He must have proposed to her again. Sure and she must have mocked him. Morrisey never did have a sunny temper, but Rachael made a lunatic out of him. They found her in that suite with her neck broke, the rest of her black and blue. And Morrisey never got hanged for it, neither. He blew town, and I never heard one word about him again. And the police? Well, she was just a whore.”

Zhu and everyone at the table, even Daniel, are struck with silence.

“Thank you for sharing your story with us, Miss Malone,” says Miss Anthony.

Jessie sniffs, but her face is as hard as stone. “And that’s how my sweet innocent Rachael crossed over to the Summerland.”

“No protection for children’s legal rights and property,” muses Miss Anthony, stroking her chin. “No decent child labor laws. No decent wage laws at all. No decent educational opportunities for most women. Few decent employment opportunities for any woman except in a menial job that doesn’t pay a wage that a single person needs to decently live on. Prostitution has everything to do with poverty and lack of opportunity. That is why,” she declares in a ringing voice, “we must have woman suffrage. Because if men do not care to address these issues with their vote, surely women will. Women will.”

“Miss Wong tells me she knows all about what the future will bring,” Jessie says. “Ain’t that so, missy? Sure and Mr. H. G. Wells don’t say a thing about woman suffrage in his book. Will women get the vote in America? Will women ever go into politics?”

“Women will get the vote,” Zhu says, and everyone applauds and cheers. She doesn’t want to say that American women won’t get the vote for another quarter of century. That the Nineteenth Amendment won’t be passed till 1920, long after Miss Anthony has gone to her grave. “And women will serve in government. Women will be elected to every important office, including President of the United States.” More exclamations and applause. She also doesn’t want to say that the first woman American President won’t get elected till nearly two centuries after this time.

“Why, that’s grand!” Donaldina Cameron exclaims. “If that’s true, then surely women will vote to outlaw prostitution. We shall drive the Jessie Malones of the world and her loathsome flesh trade out of business.”

Zhu also doesn’t want to say that the flesh trade will earn trillions of illegal dollars for the next six hundred years. It would be too much for them to bear to hear it. And too much for her to bear to say it.

Jessie glares. “Sure and we women will look into your private little sweatshop while we’re a-lookin’ at reforming all that’s bad, Miss Cameron.”

“Sweatshop!” Cameron says, rising from her chair. “And what, pray tell, are you calling a sweatshop?”

“Your mission, that’s what I’m callin’ a sweatshop.” Jessie rises, too, and flings a candied violet at Cameron. “What kind of wage do you pay your little Chinese slave girls?”

“Slave girls! How dare you!” Cameron flings a bit of Lady Baltimore cake at Jessie.

Jessie hops out of the way, saving her green silk dress from ruin. “Sure and maybe your so-called rescues is kidnappin’ just like any other kind of kidnappin’, Miss Holier-Than-Thou.”

Cameron advances, clenching her fists. “I’ll have you arrested for slander, you sinful wretch!”

“Look who’s a-slanderin’ who!”

Zhu and Mariah leap to their feet, each restraining a combatant.

“Ladies, ladies,” Susan B. Anthony says with a calm craggy smile. “Our prescient Miss Wong says we’re going to get the vote. We’re going to hold government office. We’re going to matter in society. We’re going to make a difference in society. So calm yourselves, and sit down, and let’s talk about the future.” She raises her cup. “Come, have some tea with me.”