Wednesday, 8 January 1868
THE FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL was a huge white marble edifice six stories high, made fashionable by the Prince of Wales, who had occupied the most lavish suite during his visit eight years previously. The main saloons were sumptuously decorated; every bedroom equipped with its own fireplace; and many, Margaret and Marion’s suite included, even had their own bathrooms.
After the excitement of their arrival in the city, Margaret’s mind was preoccupied with practical matters. How did one summon a maid? Was she to unpack her belongings herself? Dress herself? How did one order meals? Did one eat in private or in the public dining room? If a female guest sat in one of the saloons alone, did she risk being accosted? All the conventions she took for granted might not apply now she was on the other side of the Atlantic. The gulf between her old life and this new one seemed too vast to digest.
But even as she sank wearily onto the gilded sofa in their shared sitting room, Marion was at hand. “Tea is the order of the day,” she said, ringing the bell by the fireplace, “and then bed for you, I think. Leave everything else to me for now—it’s why I’m here. Trust me, my dear, a good night’s rest, and tomorrow you will be ready for anything New York can throw at you.”
And Marion had, once again, been right. Despite the fact that the pounding of Scotia’s paddles was replaced by the endless rattling and clopping of carriages and horses outside her window, Margaret had her first sound night’s sleep in a very long time.
IN THEIR SITTING ROOM THE next morning, she found Marion seated resplendent in her husband’s red-and-gold Oriental dressing gown, while a waiter set out a bewildering array of covered dishes.
“I was just about to call you. I took the liberty of ordering us a light breakfast. We could eat in the dining room, of course, but apparently one cannot reserve a table for that particular repast, and I do not wish to risk having to share. I am not at my best until I’ve had at least one pot of coffee.”
“A light breakfast?” Margaret said, eyeing the groaning table incredulously, noting that Marion slipped a coin into the waiter’s hand before he left. Tipping, it seemed, was yet another custom she would need to embrace.
“I may have ordered a smidgen too much,” Marion agreed, pouring her coffee, “though it’s a fraction of what’s available on the breakfast menu. The tea is English Breakfast. Does that suit you?”
“Very much,” Margaret said, relieved to see that this one, in her view essential commodity, was served just as she liked.
“Now, let’s see.” Marion began to lift the lids. “Fried oysters. And this must be the codfish with cream. Kidneys—a mixture of veal and mutton, according to the menu, though they smell just like lamb to me. Fried potatoes, a plain omelette. These pancakes must be the buckwheat cakes, which means that is the corn-bread, and these two last items—well, one of them must be the fried Indian pudding and the other the hominy. How disappointing—they look like custard and porridge. Ah well, one lives and learns.”
She began to help herself to a substantial selection, while Margaret took a tentative taste of the hominy before spooning out a small plateful of it. “Thank you very much for looking after me yesterday. I’m sorry I was poor company.”
“Stuff and nonsense. I’m not surprised you were somewhat overwhelmed. I must say, though, you look much refreshed this morning.”
“I feel much better, thank you.” Margaret cut a slice of the omelette, which was light and fluffy and flavoured with parsley.
“A number of calling cards have been left for you already,” Marion said, “and I am informed by the hotel concierge, a contact well worth cultivating, to expect a great deal more. It seems to be the practice here for the passenger lists of the liners to be published and for hotels to place lists of their more eminent guests in the newspapers.”
“Good heavens, we are not going to be besieged by callers on our first day, are we?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so, and in any case, I thought we could spend the day finding our feet, so to speak. A task that in my case is rather more of a voyage of discovery than yours,” Marion said, patting her tummy. “I think I must have gained at least a stone at sea, between the ten-course luncheons and banquet dinners, to say nothing of the champagne—not that champagne counts, of course. I will be banned from using the elevator, at this rate. I am afraid I have never had your commendable restraint when it comes to food. Mind you, I’ve never in my life had such a svelte figure as yours. Even in my younger days, my curves were what was known as generous.”
“It’s strange,” Margaret said, succumbing to the deliciously warm, doughy corn-bread, “but when Mama was forever wielding her measuring tape and fussing over the size of my waist, I craved cake. Yet in Ireland, where I was free to eat as much cake as I wanted, I found that I didn’t want to. Perhaps that is simply my contrary nature.”
“It is certainly human nature, to want what one is told one cannot have,” Marion said dryly. “I’m afraid I have little patience with this fashion for tight-lacing. No wonder so many women are forever fainting away—they can’t blooming well breathe. I abandoned my corset when Alexander was posted to Syria. It wasn’t only the heat but the sand—I assure you, my dear, you have no notion of the havoc even a few grains of the stuff trapped between your corset and your chemise can wreak. I adopted native dress, lovely loose tunics that let the breeze circulate about one’s person, and made it a dashed sight easier to let one’s husband circulate about a person, too. There was something about the heat that made both Alexander and me—” She broke off with a hearty sigh. “Ah, but there’s no point in dwelling on that now. What was it I was saying, about wanting what one can’t have?”
“You must miss him a great deal.”
“Oh, you have no idea. However, Alexander made me promise not to mourn him and to enjoy life to the full, and I try my best to do just that. It’s an odd way of mourning, some might say, but it’s my way.”
“I think it’s rather wonderful.”
“Thank you, my dear. Now then,” Marion said, inhaling the dregs of her coffee, “I have been busy while you have been catching up on your sleep. In my experience, the best way to get to know a city is to get the lie of the land, as they say. The charming concierge informs me that for the sum of five dollars one may hire a hansom cab and driver for the day. So if you are finished your repast, we will make hay while the sun shines which,” she said, casting an eye at the window, “it seems to be trying very hard to do.”
Their hotel was situated near the busy juncture with Broadway on Twenty-Third Street, with the charming small park of Madison Square nearby, no doubt a welcome oasis of green in spring. This was, according the information Marion had gleaned, at the limit of fashionable uptown when it was built about ten years previously. “Though that has all changed since,” she said as their cab jolted into action. “Mrs. William Astor, who is the arbiter of New York society and whose card, I noticed, was one of those left for you, has her mansion on Thirty-Fourth Street. I must say, this way of numbering the avenues and streets is eminently practical. It will make it quite difficult to get lost, though I am told that downtown, as it is referred to, is a different matter entirely. Not a place one ventures into, apparently.”
“You should not have said so, for now it is the one place in all New York I yearn to visit,” Margaret quipped.
“Ha! We shall content ourselves with uptown today, and the new Central Park. Though it seems to be acceptable for a young woman to go about unescorted, there are certain areas which would be foolhardy to venture into, never mind unescorted. I know you are teasing, but you will remember, Margaret, that it will undoubtedly be as easy here as it is in London to accidentally find yourself in an unsavoury district.”
“I am aware, and I was teasing. A little, anyway. Goodness, but isn’t it busy, and so very different from London. The pavements look as if they have been swept clean.”
“Sidewalks,” Marion corrected. “And this is Fifth Avenue, where the great and the good reside.”
Margaret looked about her, slightly awed by the city unfurling before her. There were two sets of tracks for the horse-drawn trams which she must remember to call streetcars, one of the many obstacles their driver faced, for despite the width of the street—avenue!—there were vast amounts of traffic. And throngs of people, too, all of them, it seemed to her, walking very quickly and purposefully. As the cab made its slow way north, the sidewalks gradually became less crowded, the buildings more widely spaced, interspersed with trees and several extremely well-kept churches. There was an air of permanence here that belied Marion’s assertion that this part of the city had, as recently as fifteen years ago, been little more than mud, hovels, and farmland. The mansions were tall, square, and similar in proportions, the brown-stone of the façades presenting a pleasing uniform appearance.
“One of these must be Mrs. William Astor’s house,” Marion mused. “I would have thought it would be grander. Caroline Astor is a formidable woman, I am told, who is the gatekeeper to New York society. The husband is not fond of socialising and prefers country pursuits.” She rolled her eyes. “A phrase that I have no doubt means exactly the same on this side of the Atlantic, if you take my meaning—or rather Shakespeare’s. Was it Shakespeare? No, it was Donne, of course. ‘The Good-Morrow.’ One of Alexander’s favourites of his poems.
“‘If ever any beauty I did see,
“‘Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.’
“Do you know it?”
“I don’t,” Margaret said, hurriedly reassessing her image of the mysterious Alexander. “Your husband sounds as if he was quite the romantic.”
Marion chuckled. “Oh, how he would laugh to hear himself so described. He wasn’t given to grand gestures, but what use are a bunch of roses or a diamond necklace when what one requires is a foot rub.”
“I wish I could have met him.”
“Ah, my dear, I am sure the pair of you would have got on swimmingly. However, if he were still with me, I would not be with you.” Marion blew her nose vigorously. “Now, that is more than enough about me. What were we talking about?”
“Mrs. William Astor.”
“She left her card, which is considered a great honour. If you are to immerse yourself in New York society, you will require her seal of approval.”
“I think I would rather be immersed in an ice-cold bath.”
“You have been out of society for some time now, have you not? No need to explain what sent you into hiding with Julia, though I am assuming it was a man, for it invariably is, with young women.”
“It was, but not in the way you assume.”
Marion patted her knee. “I’m not assuming anything. Let us take in the view and say no more on the subject.”
Margaret nodded gratefully, and as the hansom cab continued to make its way north, she did as Marion suggested. New York was expanding at a rate that made London’s growth seem positively sedentary. Only a few streets farther on from the Astor’s house, the elegant façade of the avenue began to alter. There were buildings in various states of construction everywhere. Materials were stacked beside the foundations of the nascent mansions: brick and marble, slate, chimney stacks, timbers and stone, window frames and doors. Despite the freezing weather, construction seemed to be continuing apace.
An ugly stone structure which, Marion informed her, frowning down at her notebook, was a water reservoir, took up two whole blocks. One imposing edifice was clearly a cathedral in the making. At a particularly large construction which her well-informed companion said would be the new Central Park Hotel, the traffic became busier again, for several of the streetcars terminated here, and a number of the special carriages which could be hired for drives through the park stood awaiting customers.
Informing their driver, through the hatch in the roof, that she most certainly did wish him to drive into the park, Marion smiled apologetically at Margaret. “I know you would much prefer to walk, but it is a very large park, bigger by far than anything London has to offer. Hard to believe it is only a few years old, isn’t it?”
“It’s lovely,” Margaret said, her eyes wide as their cab once more jolted into action. “It feels as if we have stumbled into another country.”
Though it was the depth of winter and the branches were bare, the park was still enchanting. A large pond with a pretty arched bridge gave way to vast swathes of what would be tempting green lawns in the summer. The main carriage-way ran at an elevated level, crossing a number of arched stone bridges below which smaller paths criss-crossed, and which Margaret determined to return to explore. A lake, clearly used in summer for boating, was partially frozen. They drove past woodland, and then south again, past another pond, and a large boathouse, before the carriage drew to a halt.
“Don’t want you to miss this, ladies,” their driver said, through the roof hatch. “The terrace is over there. It’s a short walk, but well worth the effort, I promise.”
They descended one of two broad flights of steps to a natural-looking amphitheatre, where an arcade or cloister had been built beneath the carriage drive. Refreshments were served inside this rather beautiful tiled interior, but Margaret and Marion were drawn to the large round basin where a fountain played, facing the pond, with a sign cautioning would-be skaters that the ice was dangerous.
“I love to ice-skate,” Margaret said, looking longingly at the partially frozen water. “There is a lochan, which freezes over most years, near Dalkeith Palace, my father’s home on the outskirts of Edinburgh.” She smiled, watching a little boy and girl chase each other round the fountain. “In London, one goes to the park to show off one’s toilette, to see and be seen. In the Season, by late afternoon there was a positive crush of carriages.”
“I expect they do something similar here.”
“I hated my London Season. I felt crushed by the weight of expectation.”
“To make a good match? It will be a very different experience here, if your only ambition is to establish yourself and not to find a husband. Assuming that you don’t wish to do so?”
“I most certainly do not.” The image of a smiling Donald flashed before her eyes. “I could have married a charming, kind, and respectable man who loved me, but I chose not to.”
“May I ask why? Didn’t you love him?”
“Not enough to build my world around his. Do you think that is selfish of me?”
“I think it very brave not to do what most women would.”
“Julia thinks it was a mistake.”
“Poor Julia. I think it more likely she envies you your confidence. Of course you are fortunate in having the means to support yourself.”
“I don’t think I would have married Donald, even if my father had not granted me an allowance.” Margaret grimaced. “At least, I’d like to think so. I miss him so much. Though we rarely met, he was always there in the background, a rock I could rely on. I miss his wise counsel and his humour and—oh dear, that sounds very much as if I regret refusing him, but I don’t.”
“I find that once a decision is made, it is best left at that and not continually questioned.”
“That is sound advice.”
Marion chuckled. “But not so easily followed, I warn you.”
“Well, I’m going to try, and I will start by making my entrance in New York society. You’re quite right: it is bound to be a very different experience from London. We shall have fun!”
“We! I am not so sure I would be as sought after as you by the Mrs. William Astors of this world.”
“They will be obliged to, if they desire my company. They can have both of us, or neither,” Margaret said firmly. “More importantly, we need to find somewhere to live. I have no idea of the costs involved. My allowance seems like an enormous amount to me, but I have never had to run my own establishment.”
“I have established any number of homes for myself and Alexander in my time. I would be delighted to help.”
“And will you stay on and share it with me?” Margaret asked impulsively. “Not forever, but for more than the few months we agreed to?”
Marion did not hesitate. “I will, for the time being, and then we shall see.”
“Excellent.” Above them the sky had darkened. The snow fell suddenly, in a soft flurry, and laughter echoed around the park as people jumped to their feet and held their faces to the sky with childish delight. Margaret gave a little skip of excitement. “I think we are going to be very happy here.”