7th July 1859
112 Summer Street
Brooklyn
New York City
New York State
The United States of America
Dear Queenie,
I hope this letter finds you well. I have missed our chats so much and our card-playing contests! The evenings feel lonely without you to keep me company. It is a strange new world here in America, but also one that is full of interest and excitement. I miss Ironbridge and I miss you very much, dear Queenie. Yet despite this, I am learning to see this new land as an opportunity for me to start again and its very newness allows me to do that, to move on and to put the past behind me. Grief is a terrible thing and, though I know the losses I’ve suffered will never leave me, I believe I heal a little more each day.
It was so good to receive your letter and to hear news from Ironbridge. It was almost as if we were once again seated around the card table, sharing gossip, with Maman just steps away, playing at the piano. I wish we could turn back the clock and all be together once more. Sadly, time does not move in reverse.
And I’m afraid this is the reason I must disappoint you. Your request for me to return to you and take my place beside you, running the business, is a kind and generous offer, and one that I do not take lightly, I promise you. But I feel as if returning to Ironbridge would be like trying to travel back in time, to capture something that is lost to us now. This is something I cannot do.
Maman brought me to Ironbridge to give me a better life and you, Queenie, offered me the same idea, a life of comfort and prospects. I love you both for only wanting the best for me, but wealth and comfort isn’t enough to sustain the soul. I was in need of friendship and companionship. I was in need of a soulmate with whom I could share my feelings. I found it in Owen Malone. It is hard to write his name without weeping. But you see, I have no regrets about my feelings for him. I truly loved Owen. Not a fleeting, girlish desire. I loved him and wanted a future with him. But that was not to be.
I know you may now be recoiling in horror from such a statement. I know what you feel, and what my mother felt, about relationships between the classes. But I have to disagree with you, then and now. For I believe that class is something we make, we construct out of our own false ideas of what is right and proper. But that is all it is: a construct. Class is something we build to protect ourselves, to tell ourselves that those who have and those who have not are a different breed. This makes us feel better about being rich and allows us to dismiss the rights of those who are not. I now believe with all of my heart that this is wrong. You will say it is the French in me, the influence of that revolutionary nation in my upbringing. You will say I am like my mother once was, young and foolish. My mother felt she was proven wrong. But I disagree. I believe that the class system we live by has robbed us all of those we love. The treatment of the brickworkers, the strike and its aftermath, the crimes committed on both sides, the separation of classes into masters and servants. All of this creates a society of conflict, envy and hatred. And it has directly led to the deaths of those we love. Anny Malone has lost her son Owen. I have lost my mother and you your granddaughter. And now, I fear, I must tell you that you will lose me, now and for the foreseeable future, at least.
Here, in America, I see a different way of life. To be sure, there are the rich and the poor, and the gap between them is just as wide as in England. But there is a different idea about it here, a different way of looking at it. If you speak to people here about their lives, there is hope for change. There is an idea of what can be if one works hard and believes. In England I saw some of that spirit in the brickworkers when they went on strike. Yes, they were opposed to you and I sympathise with you on that count. I know how hard it was for you to run that business fairly and in a way that made a profit. But the wrongs that were perpetrated against those workers were unacceptable; they were crimes in their own way and had to be paid for. You lost those you love and your house. They lost their hope. I see hope for improvement all around me here, not only between the workers and the masters but between men and women and people of all races. For America is a mixture of all types and shapes and sizes and colours, more so even than Paris, and a thousand times more than Ironbridge.
You see, there are people here who are fighting for change. I am living in New York with Dinah – remember Dinah, my maid? She is my maid no longer and we live together as friends. She is a fine artist – did you ever know that about her? One day, she drew a map for me to the very house you live in now and it was a work of art. I love to write and she loves to draw. Some friends we met on our ship to New York were in the newspaper business. On our arrival, Dinah and I were invited to stay with them. Uncle Cyril has gone to Pennsylvania with his companion James Melton, yet I decided to stay here at the comfortable home of our journalist companions, who have made Dinah and me so comfortable and welcome. Encouraged by them, Dinah began sketching scenes from the streets hereabouts and I wrote descriptions to go with them, a visitor’s views of American life. We now have these published in a New York journal called Street and Smith’s New York Weekly. It is a charming publication, full of fascinating facts and amusing anecdotes. Dinah and I are now members of the profession of journalists! Yes, we are paid for our work and we love it. Just yesterday, we met a man at a gathering who was once a slave here in America. He spoke of the rights of negroes and the rights of women too. He publishes his own newspaper and his name is Frederick Douglass. The sub-heading of his paper reads thus: Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Colour — God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren. To read these words moved me very much. I said to Dinah afterwards that there would only be one thing I would add to it and that is this: Equality is of no Class. Just as there are movements here to unite all people, whatever colour or sex they happen to be, I believe in the movement to unite people of all classes. I believe that mankind will not progress if we continue in our current unequal and unfair distinctions between rich and poor.
All of this must sound like heresy to you, I am sure. But it sounds like music to me. Times are changing here. There is talk of war. Many do not agree with me. Many agree with you. Others hate and will kill for their beliefs. I hope it does not come to war. But if it does, I know what side I will be on. And sadly, it will not be the same side as you, dear Queenie, or of any King. I am not a King. I am an Ashford. Though I love you, I cannot come to you. Though I wish you well, I will not live your life. I love you very much, Queenie, but I cannot accept the life that you live. There is a portion of my heart that will always be with you, that makes me yearn to return to you. But I know that ultimately I would be unhappy and that I would make you unhappy too. It would never work. It is a hard choice I make, but I must make it.
I will write to you often and share my new life here with you on paper. I wish to make my living through words and will use words to conjure up my life here for you. I hope you will do the same and keep in touch with news from Ironbridge. It will always be a special place for me and I am so very fond of it. Some of the best people I have ever met are Ironbridge folk. But it was never my home. It could have been, if events had not turned out as they did. Instead, I spent a few heady months there, ending in unimaginable loss. I am afraid that it has become the seat of my pain and I cannot bear to live there again.
Thank you for offering to make me the sole recipient of the King fortune. But I tell you now, I do not want your money. I do not want any part of the King way of life. I will never take a penny of that money. Once, a lifetime ago, I spoke with Owen Malone about brickmaking. He told me, ‘There is blood in those bricks.’ Now that you know about Owen and my love for him, you will understand that I believe there is blood in that money. I want none of it. If you make me your heir, I will give it all away. Thus, please do not give me your money. Find someone else deserving who wants and needs it more than me. Assist those you have wronged. If you want to make it right, you need to do something to modify both your business and yourself. I believe you have it in you, Queenie. I have seen the goodness in you.
As I write this letter, I realise that today is the 7th July and is Hettie Jones’s birthday. Exactly one year ago, I stood in Anny and Peter Malone’s cottage and heard that child come into the world. My Owen was still with us. It was one of the most precious moments of my life. If you wish to contribute in any way to my happiness, then do not offer me money. Instead, help that child and others like her. Small alterations in your own life can lead to huge changes in the lives of others; you can bridge the divide. Improve the lot in life of the poor, in Ironbridge, in Shropshire, in England and the whole of society.
I will live my life here from now on. I wish you all the very best with yours.
Love and hope always,
from your great-granddaughter,
Bea