I have just read of the death of Mrs. Jefferson Davis. Spotting the prominently featured obituary provided a moment of elation, as though I had won a long-waged competition—but there was no competition, and no winner.
The last time I saw Mrs. Davis was at Winnie’s funeral in Richmond, Virginia, and then from a considerable distance. Hoping to be inconspicuous, I had sat on a back pew during the service in St. Paul’s Church and stood well apart from the graveside gathering. I would have liked to speak to Winnie’s sister, Mrs. Addison Hayes, whom Winnie had referred to often and lovingly as Maggie, but that lady stayed close to her mother, the person I wished most to avoid. Over the next days, I debated with myself about writing a note of condolence to Mrs. Hayes and finally decided not to; since I had not really known her, and considering the way my relationship with the family ended, the communication might seem to her inappropriate. It occurred to me later that, had I approached Maggie Hayes or observed her at closer range that day, I likely would have noted mannerisms that reminded me of Winnie. In photographs, they did not resemble each other; the older daughter seemed to me to favor their mother, and Winnie their father. When I received an engraved acknowledgment for the floral wreath I had sent, I thought perhaps the envelope had been addressed by Winnie’s sister, as the handwriting did not appear to be that of their mother. Although I have long since destroyed Mrs. Davis’s letters—which toward the end of our association became quite infuriating, even insulting—I would still recognize that bold, arrogant script.
Those I recognized in the large gathering either pretended not to see me or nodded in my direction and quickly averted their attention, except for Kate Pulitzer, who, after the crowd began to disperse, came straight to me and pressed her cheek to mine. “Dearest Fred,” she murmured. “I am sure our darling girl knows you are here.” I did not admit it then, but I concurred with that conjecture; at one particular moment during the burial service, I had such a strong sense of Winnie’s presence I wanted to search for her.
Kate had sent the message informing me of Winnie’s death before it became general knowledge. Reading her gently worded revelation, I had experienced a sense of release, which did not last, of course. I will never be cut loose from Winnie. But over the years, I have managed to rise above my hatred for the contentious person who drove the wedge between us.
As is her custom, Marion, the eldest of my three sisters who live with me, arose early and perused the morning paper before putting it neatly refolded at my place. She waited until I had served myself from the sideboard before asking, “Do you plan to attend this funeral too?”
I knew what she meant by that “too.”
Josephine and Catherine, having already murmured “Good morning, Brother,” in tandem according to their birth rank, gazed at their congealing porridge, waiting for me to say grace over it.
“Good.” Marion would have said more, had I not silenced her with a glance and proceeded with the blessing.
I have been back to Hollywood Cemetery only once since Winnie’s rites, and that was to see her monument, which had been erected by an organization of Southern women who call themselves the Daughters of the Confederacy. Presumably, they appropriated the title from the singular version, which was conferred on Winnie when she first began traveling with her father to those Lost Cause circuses. Thus laureled, she became famous not only in the formerly Confederate states but throughout the country and abroad. My mother said, when I returned from Mississippi and informed her that the engagement had been broken, “Perhaps it’s for the best. You would not have liked living in that garish sort of limelight. It borders on the notorious for a young lady to be referred to familiarly by her first name—and a nickname, at that—by masses of people she doesn’t know personally. How could Mrs. Davis have allowed her daughter to assume such a public role?” After a moment’s further reflection, she added, with horror, “Oh, Alfred, do you suppose your connection with that family has made our good name notorious?”
“No, I think we managed to do that on our own,” I said. Mother placed her hands over her ears and shook her head, imploring me not to elaborate.
When I learned, from an article in the New York World, that a small figurine of an angel that purportedly had belonged to Winnie had been submitted as a model for the monument, I wondered, from the description, whether it was one I had given Winnie as a memento of her first visit to Syracuse. The impressive marble sculpture in the Richmond cemetery did not bear much resemblance to my recollection of the alabaster trifle I had purchased, but I liked the idea that Winnie might have kept it.
The date of my only pilgrimage to the Davis family plot in Hollywood Cemetery was close to what would have been the thirteenth anniversary of when we were introduced. That occasion I recall as though it were last week. The first thing that struck me about Winnie Davis was the color of her gown, which brought to my mind the small golden-orange flowers that had flourished in my grandmother’s garden. The next was the fact that a substantial amount of Miss Davis’s tawny skin was visible. I had thought Southern girls dressed chastely, with lace covering their shoulders and upper arms, yet Winnie’s arms and shoulders were tantalizingly bare. Later, after she had returned to Mississippi and I had identified the flower from an illustration in a botanical encyclopedia, I wrote to her: “At the Emorys’ reception, as we were being introduced, your lovely image brought to my mind a delicate blossom, which I have since learned, through scientific research, is called a nasturtium. But should you prefer, I shall be happy to change the comparison to a rose or a lily. …”
She responded, “Your having likened me to a flower you had to look up the name of is more imaginative, therefore more of a compliment, than the usual analogy of comparing a girl to roses or lilies. Although that particular blossom is not in my mother’s garden, she has described it to me: ‘The nasturtium comes in the colors of the sun and the moon and tends to hide beneath its foliage.’ As mothers are wont to do, mine asked why I had asked the question, and I replied, ‘Just curious.’ Of course, I could not tell her about our special friendship, since we have agreed to keep that secret for the time being. …”
Below her scrawled signature (for all her erudition and impressive vocabulary, Winnie’s penmanship was like that of a young boy) was a postscript: “The idea of having foliage to hide beneath is appealing to one who places a high value on solitude and privacy. You should know that I tend to have a very nast(urtium)y disposition at times and should be left alone, as I am not always good company.”
I was too smitten then to take that warning seriously. It was only after all was said and done, and could not be unsaid and undone, that I began to understand the situation in simple terms. I could hold my coat over Winnie’s head in a rainstorm, but I could not shield her from the black cloud that seemed to overtake her suddenly and without warning. Nor, it seemed, could I protect her from the insidious manipulation of the woman who had brought her into the world.
Yet the parent I had been most apprehensive about was her father. In the two years after we met, Winnie had made several trips to my state, during which she had become acquainted with my friends and family, before she gave me permission to visit her milieu in Mississippi. And then I had to insist on it, for propriety’s sake. Since her mother allowed Winnie to grant my urgent request, I assumed the Davises had received a good report about me from our mutual friends, the Emorys.
I was on the train, headed South, when Winnie informed her mother that I was more than a casual friend. When Winnie repeated the conversation to me, I could visualize her saying the words quickly, with her chin thrust out: “Fred and I are in love, and he intends to ask Father’s permission to marry me.”
She quoted her mother’s reply: “If you’d told me ahead of time how important your visitor is, I would have made Charlotte Russe for his welcoming dinner. As it is, we’re having a rather mundane blackberry cobbler.”
Although Mrs. Davis and I would become adversaries, I must credit her with having had an open mind about me in the beginning. As she herself would assure me, my sweetheart’s mother was “immediately and most favorably impressed” with my appearance, manners, and background: Six years out of Harvard (and six years Winnie’s senior), I was established in the practice of law in a city where my family had been prominent since its founding. According to Winnie, the morning before I was to arrive that afternoon, her mother had tried to pave the way by softening Mr. Davis toward the idea of his daughter’s being courted by a Northerner. She told the former president I shared his political views (I was then and still am a Democrat, and my father had been a delegate to the party’s national convention in 1876). She also informed him that I was quite scholarly and had the greatest admiration for The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. That part was not true. I had found Mr. Davis’s opus such excruciatingly hard going that I gave up after the first hundred pages. When I explained to Winnie that these volumes, which she so graciously had sent to me, were intellectually beyond my grasp, she laughed. “Oh, Fred, nothing is beyond your grasp. It’s just not your cup of tea. I understand, and so would my father. But don’t bare your soul to my mother on the subject.”
Winnie said her father had nodded noncommittally when his wife informed him a friend of Tom Emory’s in Syracuse, New York, was coming to visit Winnie. When she mentioned the prospect of my eventually becoming a son-in-law, his response was, “Never. Death would be preferable.” Winnie first reported to me that he uttered only the word “Never.” A few minutes later, she corrected that version, because, “Even at the risk of hurting your feelings, I do not want to keep the truth from you.” If Winnie had realized truth can be veiled, and doesn’t have to be put on display, I might have fought harder for her. As it was, her candor sometimes overwhelmed me and made me doubt that we could ever live happily together. But that prospect did not dampen my determination to marry her. And for five years, I never wavered in my hope of having that chance.
When I arrived at Beauvoir on that August day, she was fetchingly attired in a riding habit the color of dark leaves and waiting in the wood-framed gazebo that served as a minuscule station. I was relieved to see she was alone and hadn’t come on horseback with a mount for me. Aware that Winnie was an enthusiastic and accomplished equestrienne, I had not yet admitted to her that I preferred for horses to be attached to vehicles. She was amazingly athletic for one of the fairer sex, but there was nothing un-feminine about her; Winnie was graceful in all her movements. I would watch her raise her arms to adjust her hair or a hat and marvel at how well synchronized that fluid motion appeared. As I emerged from the car, I knew my face was flushed with the expectation of seeing her again and finding her even lovelier in person than the ethereal vision I had carried in my mind for the two months since we were last together. When I leaned forward to place a kiss on her cheek, she put her arms around me and pressed her lips lingeringly on mine, as though oblivious of the train, which had not yet resumed its journey, and the likelihood that we were being observed from its windows. As we strolled along a densely wooded path to the house, she said, “You can, of course, expect a warm welcome—my parents are very hospitable, especially my mother, and they like to show off Beauvoir to visitors—but you must not bring up the subject of marriage.”
Feeling rather cheated—I had memorized and rehearsed my speech before a pier mirror, as though I were about to argue in court—I said petulantly, “As one gentleman to another, I feel it is incumbent upon me to inform your father, at our initial meeting, that my intentions toward his daughter are entirely honorable.”
“He knows that. He just doesn’t want to have the conversation yet.”
“Can you tell me what his primary objection might be to my suit?”
“The geography. You live in enemy territory.”
“But you’ve said your parents have many friends in the North, such as the Emorys, who brought us together, and that those connections that were lost because of the War have been renewed in recent years, with no bitter feelings.”
“It’s not easy to explain. Darling, please be patient.”
I treasure the fact that she used an intimate expression of endearment before I did. She was always a step ahead of me in showing affection. As we walked along that woodland path and conversed and got used to each other again, we paused occasionally to embrace, and as though heeding her own advice to me, Winnie was careful not to let her hair or clothes reflect any disarray. I wondered how she could go so quickly from being impetuously foolhardy to being cool and collected. I did not know then that she had plans for us to return to that dark patch of forest on the following day and that there, on a cloistered spot beside a frantic brook, beneath the tallest pine trees I had ever seen, we would give ourselves wholly to each other in what would be the most sublime experience of my life. Later, we made love in other places, but the first occasion is the one I find most accessible to revisiting. Visualizing, in my mind, the hazy conjoined image of the two of us on that magical afternoon makes me feel as though Winnie and I are still and forever linked together.
Seated at the other end of the table, in the place that for a sadly brief time was our mother’s, Marion pretends she is the hostess of my house. She watches me with a fond, sardonic smile, as though we are a married couple and she knows what I’m thinking. I suspect she dares to pretend, to herself, that I am the husband who never materialized for her. She has always had presence and was attractive in her youth, but the bank problems and the fire put a damper on her chances. If Marion didn’t irritate me so, I could feel more compassion and admiration for this sister, who is two years younger than I, and who holds me in such high esteem. The other two, who were noisy, exuberant young girls, seem to have lost that vitality when they lost hope of being chosen for matrimony. It’s almost as though they’ve taken vows of silence. Now, having dabbed at their mouths with large damask napkins—being careful to avoid the embroidered monogram near one hemstitched corner (my first gift to Mother after the fire was to replace the table linens that had been in her trousseau)—they wait for me to leave the table first. I established that routine last year, after Mother went to reside at the excellent care-giving facility Briar-cliff-on-the-Hudson. As I leave the dining room without throwing a crumb of language to any of this trio, Marion’s voice lifts like a bird on the wing: “Brother, will you be here for dinner?”
I disdain to answer (which she will rationalize as being due to preoccupation, not rudeness) and continue to the foyer, where I retrieve, from the hall tree, my hat and a gold-knobbed cane that belonged to my father. Walter has placed my leather case on a table next to the heavy, paneled door he is waiting to open for me. After I am delivered to my offices by the cab he procures, I shall concentrate on my work as a patent attorney, which I enjoy because I can lose myself in it for hours at a time, and also, it’s quite lucrative. For the past twelve years, since my father died, my goal has been to restore what should have been my (or rather, our) inheritance. I am thankful I was able to provide my mother with some semblance of her accustomed manner of existence before she lost the ability to discern between what is gracious living and what is not. Those years in a modest house on a side street in Syracuse were hard on her; she became a recluse, under the pretense of being an invalid. But she liked living in New York, where she could take carriage rides without worrying whether or not people were staring at her. Had it not been for the stroke, I believe she would have regained her once formidable spirit and determination.
As it turns out, the meeting I had prepared for has been cancelled, nothing urgent awaits my attention, and I find myself gazing out the window at familiar surroundings I do not feel a part of, although in the three years since I moved to this metropolis, my clientele has more than doubled. It was a wrenching decision to pull up stakes in Syracuse, where my ancestor John Wilkinson opened the first law office. Since I could not in good conscience leave my mother and sisters behind—my father’s will had named me as guardian of his minor children, who at the time he died also included Henry, my only brother—I brought them with me, and established our household in the West Fifties.
My mother did not protest the move. It wasn’t as though we were leaving the house where she had spent the best years of her life. That one, which the newspapers at the time of its destruction referred to as a mansion, had gone up in flames on a midsummer night with a full moon; the cause of the conflagration was never discerned. We were all on the second floor in our bedrooms when a neighbor banged on the door, alerting us to the danger. Then that good man hurried up and down the street, rousing others to come to our aid. Henry and I had herded Mother and our sisters down the stairs and onto the lawn and had rushed back inside to retrieve what we could, when we heard a moan. I found George Jemison, our loyal retainer (Walter is his nephew), collapsed in the dining room. We brought the poor man out, but he could not be revived and subsequently died. The bucket brigade would not allow us to enter that furnace again. They did their heroic best, but only a few chairs and small tables were saved. The Persian carpets, portraits and other paintings, some exquisite bronzes, and virtually all the family heirlooms of jewelry, crystal, silver, and china, were consumed by the flames. Not a tree in the apple orchard behind the house was spared. It was as though that graceful hill I had sledded as a boy had suddenly turned into an avaricious altar, and our fine old house, which had graced the property with such dignity, was the sacrifice it demanded. But to what purpose? For weeks afterward, whenever she was not sedated by opium, my mother would cry out a single word: “Why?” At least my father did not live to see this tragedy.
Because of Father’s death, which occurred a few months before I met Winnie, I almost did not attend the reception the Emorys had for her. I had sent my regrets, but on the day before the event I happened to see Tom, and he urged me to reconsider. “You’ve been the model son and heir. Now you deserve some reprieve from that house of mourning. Please stop in for awhile, Fred. I especially want you to meet Miss Varina Anne Davis of Mississippi. I’m sure you’ll find her delightful company, and I understand she’s unattached.”
I had recently taken the black wreath off our front door, although my mother wanted it to remain for a full year. I was still grieving for my father, but I was ready to resume some social activity. I thanked Tom for the opportunity to reverse my previous response and assured him I looked forward to making the acquaintance of a young lady from the Deep South who was not someone’s wife or spoken for.
That exchange reminded me of a former classmate’s discourse during a drinking session in Cambridge shortly before we were to graduate. Chauncey Talbotton had just learned that his longtime sweetheart, whom he had counted on becoming engaged to as soon as he got back to Georgia, had eloped with another man. He said morosely, “Here’s some advice, Fred, in case you ever need it. Girls of the South, especially those from the deeper states, can convince you they’re sweet and tender as June corn. But they also possess a devilish streak, which comes from the fact that their daddies or granddaddies or both fought and maybe died in the War, and their mamas and grandmamas, having learned how to be tough because they had to, passed that knowledge on to them. So be wary of any princess you meet from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, or Georgia. She’ll make you think you’re the one— then, should she take a notion to, she’ll break your damn heart without a backward glance.”
Coming as it did, after what would prove to be a fateful encounter with Dr. Thomas Emory, I might have taken that recollection as a warning. On the contrary, I felt buoyantly optimistic at the prospect of meeting Miss Varina Anne Davis.
Mr. Jefferson Davis was strikingly distinguished looking, in a dapper, courtly, old-gentleman sort of way. He had a full head of silver hair and an immaculately trimmed beard. His posture was faultless, whether he was receiving guests or taking his ease in one of the oak rocking chairs, which according to his wife, he had constructed himself, along with other rustic odds and ends of furniture, when they first came to Beauvoir. (Mrs. Davis made it sound as if they had arrived there at the same time, but I learned from Winnie that was not the case.)
On my initial visit to Beauvoir, Winnie informed me, as soon as we had a moment in private, that her father obviously liked me, since he had invited me to accompany him that evening to the bath house, to watch the flounders. “He doesn’t share that favorite pastime with many people,” she said. I liked him immediately, although I found the close resemblance of Mr. Davis and his daughter disconcerting. The topography of sadness that mapped his face was a gossamer veil on hers.
The man was less austere than I expected. He seemed reserved, yet convivial enough; physically strong, but not robust. Within an hour of making his acquaintance, I watched him wade into a fierce fight between two large dogs, pull their snarling mouths apart with his bare hands, and emerge unscathed. When Winnie introduced me to her parents on their spacious front gallery, which was quaintly referred to as the porch, Mrs. Davis recited my biographical data as though the information would be new to me, as well as to her husband. He nodded in my direction after each point during that litany and smiled at the end of it, as though to say, “Good. Now we’re through with that.” Although she made no mention of my maternal grandfather, who had been actively involved in the American Anti-Slavery Society and a leading advocate for women’s rights, Mrs. Davis noted I was “well-born and connected to New England’s most illustrious families, including the Quincys and the Hancocks.”
I was disappointed that Winnie’s father would not entertain any discussion of my intentions and somewhat discomfited by the coquettish attitude of her mother. That Winnie and I were allowed to wander about the estate without chaperonage gave me hope that, in due course, we would obtain her father’s blessing. I was surprised, to say the least, when the girl I loved (she was twenty-two then) seduced me on the second day of my visit. A small circle of blood on the back of her skirt indicated she had been a virgin. Winnie assured me that she would wash that spot from the garment and no one else would see it. I was greatly relieved to hear that her mother (who, I had already surmised, was acutely observant) would not be at the house when we returned and that her father would be in his library cottage. I felt very protective of Winnie and was glad I had maintained enough presence of mind to practice coitus interruptus. Assuming the display of ardor and her determination to become intimate were a result of her European education, I suggested with as much delicacy as I could muster that if we were going to indulge ourselves in that sort of pleasure, we should do so only at times when she would be least susceptible to conceiving a child. Winnie said, nonchalantly, “Of course, you are right to bring up that subject, but don’t worry. A friend’s mother has instructed me about timing and other methods of contraception.”
I thought, with amazement, Southern girls must really learn a lot at their mothers’ knees. “Other methods,” I repeated. “Such as—?”
“There is a sheepskin sheath that, from the look of the thing, certainly appears to be trustworthy. I could order a supply for you from a source in New Orleans, and I can show you how to put it on—” She seemed as earnest as a tutor explaining a lesson to a backward pupil.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. I might have laughed, had I not felt somewhat insulted that she should assume I was ignorant about the subject.
“Also, through the same source, I could procure a device called a cervical cap. And there’s a very simple method that involves a syringe with an alum solution.”
“Whatever you think best,” I said, as though we were discussing the details of our wedding. In fact, I wished we were having that kind of conversation. Although she had been the instigator, I felt as though I had taken advantage of her. I have never been tempted to tell anyone about that aspect, or for that matter any other aspect, of my relationship with Winnie Davis. I have not allowed myself to show an interest in how she lived her life after me, and with whom she might have been keeping company. My friends have kindly avoided the subject; however, some years ago, a casual acquaintance told me he had attended Mardi Gras in New Orleans the week before and had recognized my former fiancée as the featured occupant on the most spectacular float in the parade.
“Did she look happy?” I asked.
“Her eyes were hidden behind a half-face mask, and I don’t recall seeing her smile; I would say she looked resigned. During the ball, people were approaching the make-believe royalty to pay their respects. I’m sorry I didn’t get in the line to greet Miss Davis. I would have conveyed your very best wishes to her—”
“If you knew me better, you would realize that kind of banter would have been very much out of line,” I said.
“Well, I’m sorry I brought this obviously painful subject up. But now that I have, I’ll add that the atmosphere down there, all that pompous chivalry, not just in New Orleans, but everywhere I’ve visited in the Old South—well, I can’t imagine why they keep up the pretense.”
The man had a point, but I didn’t want to agree with him. I had been charmed by the South that Winnie inhabited.
Winnie’s father and I never had the official talk, but on my second visit to Beauvoir, it seemed that he was taking my presence in his life for granted, and I dared to assume he had come around to the idea of having me for a son-in-law. His wife had all but guaranteed that would be the case. Yet later—after Mr. Davis had died, and after Mrs. Davis had formally announced our engagement and then informed the world of the postponement of the nuptials—I would be advised by a Major Morgan, the Davises’ nearest neighbor on that rough-shell road in Mississippi, to give up my quest to marry Winnie. Morgan came to Syracuse and asked questions of my colleagues and friends before he presented himself at my office. As though I were a boy in need of mature guidance, the pompous old fellow addressed me as “son” and placed his hand on my shoulder: “Look at the situation from our standpoint. Your esteemed family has suffered a severe reversal of fortune”—he’d found out about the Wilkinson Bank’s failure—“and you are not sufficiently established in your profession to support a wife and simultaneously provide for your mother and siblings, who should be your first priority.” He then confided that supporters of the Lost Cause, of whom he was one of the most ardent, would like to see “Miss Winnie” establish what would be regarded as a royal bloodline for the South by marrying a grandson of one of the distinguished Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson, or Sidney Johnston. The last named, Major Morgan added gratuitously, had been Mr. Jefferson Davis’s favorite of the lot. I heard the man out with appall and embarrassed anger. I knew he was someone Mrs. Davis leaned on for advice, and it was obvious she had dispatched him to do this dirty business. The colleague I was closest to, whom this Mississippian had approached quite openly, was aghast that I should be treated thus by the woman who had urged me, not so long before, to travel to Europe and provide emotional support to her grieving daughter.
Winnie was abroad with the Pulitzers when her father died. Her mother decided that she should remain with them in Italy and that I should come to visit her and try to cheer her up. When I arrived in Naples, Kate Pulitzer was waiting for me. Her husband, she explained, could not stand the noise in the harbor, so they had moved their group from the moored yacht to the Grand Hotel. On the way there, she assured me Winnie’s current affliction of melancholic depression was easily explained. “She has been crushed by a massive feeling of guilt because she was not available to her father in his extremity. Winnie has said, many times these last few days, ‘I would not have let him make that trip to Davis Bend alone.’ And, ‘I should have been informed as soon as he became ill; I could have got back in time to see him, and at the very least, I would have been at his funeral.’ Now that you’re here, I am sure her good humor will gradually return, and before too long, she will be her delightful self again.”
Kate’s optimistic projection did not occur. Winnie stared at me as though I were a stranger. When she spoke my name in a dejected tone of voice, as though she were thinking, Why in the world is he here? I wondered that myself. Instead of sending me into a situation I was ill-equipped to handle, Mrs. Davis should have crossed the Atlantic to minister, with maternal compassion, to her suffering child. I could see Winnie’s anguish was genuine, but her personality had altered significantly since I’d last seen her; she seemed suspicious of everything and everyone. The next day, during an episode of extreme delusion, she screamed at me: “If you take me to an asylum, I will run away” and “My father will pistol-whip anyone who tries to lock me up.” She did not in my presence show any outburst of temper around Kate or Joseph Pulitzer, so one part of her must have realized that while she could rage at me all she wished and I would not abandon her, she’d best not turn on the people who were treating her to this sojourn.
Once Winnie got used to my being there with her, she required frequent reassurance of my devotion. She even begged me to make love to her. Of course, I could not take that liberty: Propriety did not permit me to lock the door when no one else was in her room but the two of us, and at any moment, Kate or a servant might rap on that door or, for all I knew, immediately open it, to check on the patient.
Not that I wasn’t attracted by Winnie’s unusually wanton expression and the aphrodisiacal unkemptness of her loosened clothing and tangled hair. She could not bear for the bedcovers to be over her—Joseph’s physician (who supplied the laudanum and morphine that seemed to alleviate her misery for brief periods) explained that claustrophobia often sets in during periods of mental abnormality—and I lasciviously enjoyed these glimpses of her bare limbs and feet, especially when she was sleeping. It occurred to me that taking this wild-eyed creature of despair while she was unconscious would be just as thrilling as the rites she initiated in those deep, private woods at her family’s estate.
As it happened, shortly before I was to return to the United States, my abstinent stance gave way. Winnie’s vitality had revived sufficiently for her to be up and around. Kate said, to me, with the faintest tinge of a blush on her lovely face, “You and Winnie should have some time away from the rest of us. I’ve made arrangements for you to take her on a weekend adventure, the highlight of which will be a monorail ride up Mount Vesuvius on John Mason Cook’s funicular. I have reserved accommodations at the charming inn at the base of the mountain. Mr. Cook has enlarged the restaurant, and I understand it’s quite elegant.”
I could not imagine any excursion that might be more problematical for someone with nervous problems than what I’d just heard described. I was also aware, as Kate apparently was not, that the volcano had erupted several times—most recently in 1872—and that its ashes had been distributed over all of southern Europe. Despite my misgivings about the venture, Winnie’s face lit up when I told her of the plan. She said, “Kate is a dear. Some time ago, I mentioned to her that I had read a fascinating engineering study of the funicular railway and that I would love to take a ride on it someday. Are you familiar with the concept of single-rail construction?”
“Not specifically,” I said warily.
“Fred, it is absolutely ingenuous. Longitudinally laid wooden stringers carry the one rail, upon which the central wheels ride. The funicular uses two cables, which are driven by a steam engine at the bottom and round pulleys at the top. Side rails, placed at an angle, are adapted to wheels that have axles projecting from the floors of the coaches, thus keeping the carriage upright—”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll take you on the ride, if you promise the carriage will remain upright. Actually, I would ride in it upside down if necessary, because I am so happy to see you looking forward to something again.”
“What I’m really looking forward to are the nights at the inn,” she whispered. “When we get there, you can tell the concierge we will not be needing that second room.”
I was almost giddy with relief. I thought the darling girl I loved had returned.
And so she had, for awhile. That interlude, the last private time I ever had with Winnie, was as near perfect as anything could be. I believe she realized that our relationship was newly fragile, as a result of her unpredictable mood reversals of agitation and depression and my inability to pull her out of either, and that she resolved to keep herself on an even keel for those forty-eight hours. When I left the Pulitzer entourage in Florence a few days later, Winnie had begun to withdraw into another phase of grief, this one more inward. I hoped she would not scream at me when I bid her farewell. She didn’t. In fact, she did not seem to notice I was leaving.
I had reported via letters to Mrs. Davis several times during the trip. I did not mince words; I thought she should know just how severely afflicted her daughter’s state of mind was: “I know that Winnie has written to you. Perhaps you will see from her letters better than mine how difficult it has been for me to get her to discuss any commitment to the future. …” I suggested Mrs. Davis come over and get her. Winnie needed to be brought home one way or another. She could not travel alone, and it would not look right for her to travel with me, without a chaperone. I told Mrs. Davis that, in my opinion, it could take at least six months and maybe a year of tender care before Winnie would be ready to face the world again. I also advised the woman, “It would be cruel to broach the subject of marriage with her before next winter.”
Nevertheless, soon after I returned in April, my engagement to Varina Anne Davis was formally announced by Mrs. Jefferson Davis. Northern newspapers made a great deal of the polarity: The daughter of Jefferson Davis, the only President of the Confederacy, was going to marry the grandson of the New England Unitarian minister Samuel May, who had traveled widely as an anti-slavery speaker and assisted in the rescue of escaped slaves from the South via the Underground Railroad. In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, defamatory letters were delivered to me, all with postmarks from the South. (One of the more galling accused me of being a “Negro-loving zealot” and warned that if I absconded with their “purest lily of the South” I would be hunted down and castrated.)
Two months later, in June, Winnie returned from Europe with the Pulitzers and was urged by various individuals and organizations to terminate the engagement her mother had announced. In July, my family’s residence, where nineteen years earlier my Abolitionist grandfather had died, was destroyed by fire. In August, Mrs. Davis posted another notice, stating that her daughter’s wedding had been postponed until June 25, 1891, as Miss Davis did not wish to be married until at least a year after the date of her father’s death. In October, I was summoned to Mississippi for a bitter confrontation with this woman whose emissary had caused me great embarrassment by coming to my territory to ask questions about my financial resources and look for scandal about my family.
“Admit it,” Mrs. Davis spoke to me as though I were a common criminal. “You cannot afford to maintain my daughter in comfort and style, and you have not been honest about the appalling situation of your finances.” Winnie was not present during the diatribe, but she came out afterward, and we had a brief farewell session. I do not recall a single word of what we said to each other, although I read somewhere that Mrs. Davis reported my last remark to Winnie was, “I shall never give you up.” If I said any such thing, it was more likely, “I shall always love you.” Even if she had been willing and strong enough to defy her mother then, I doubt I could have gone through with the marriage, knowing that woman would still be involved in our lives.
Much to my consternation, a few months later, Winnie and her mother moved to New York to earn their livelihood as writers. That development effectively ended my own plan to relocate there in order to expand my law practice.
Winnie had been dead for four years when I decided her mother could not do me any more damage and that the metropolis was big enough for both of us.
The only time I came near Winnie after that day was at a reception at the Pulitzers’; she looked as if she were seeing a ghost, and I suspect I did too. After she quickly changed direction, in order to avoid having to acknowledge me in that gathering, I took my leave. The next day, I sent Winnie a brief, sincere note, apologizing for any embarrassment or discomfort my presence at the party might had caused her, and in general, wishing her well. There was no reply, and I have preferred to believe her mother confiscated that missive and Winnie never saw it.
Recollecting fleeting glimpses of Winnie gives me weird pleasure. As she ascended the steps of a bus with a sweep of skirt caught up in a gloved hand, I recognized the strong curve of her calves and her slender ankles. In a crowded theatre lobby, I spotted her beneath a chandelier that seemed to focus all of its light on her auburn hair.
The first time Winnie visited my family at the James Street residence, she politely complimented her surroundings, but it was easy to see she had little interest in domestic decor, other than to take mental note of details to put into her novels. This seemingly callous indifference on her part irritated my mother. However, when Mother mentioned that her first cousin was the writer Louisa May Alcott, Winnie responded with enthusiasm. “There is no one in the world I would rather meet than Miss Alcott. When her novel Little Women came out, my sister received the book as a Christmas gift. She would read it aloud to me, a chapter at the time; then Maggie and I would pretend we belonged to the happy March family and lived in their cozy house.” She turned to me and said with what appeared to be mock exasperation, but I knew was the real thing, “Fred, you have never told me you are related to a beloved, renowned writer of novels.”
My mother, quite mollified, said, “Well, my dear, you certainly must meet Louisa. Fred, we should all take Winnie to Concord for a visit with our famous cousin.”
Behind her back, Winnie mouthed: Let’s not take them.
I explained to my mother that the two lady authors would have much to talk about; therefore, only Winnie and I would go to Concord, so as not to risk overtiring Louisa with too much company.
The journey from Syracuse to Concord took most of a day, but it was the best time of year in New England. Gazing out the window at the rich panorama of autumn, Winnie said, “How do you stand so much beauty at once and the knowledge that it will return again the next year?” That was an epiphany. I thought: She has resolved not to let her parents and friends dissuade her from marrying me and living in my part of the country.
Louisa awaited us at Orchard House, the family home she maintained with earnings from her popular children’s books and the blood-and-thunder novels she wrote under a different name. Among the relatives who lived there were Lulu, the niece Louisa had adopted, whose deceased mother, Abigail May Alcott, had been an artist of some acclaim in Paris—Winnie was aware of Abigail’s fame, also—and nephews who were the prototypes for the boys in Little Men. Winnie and my first cousin once removed greeted each other with ease and within minutes had convinced themselves and me that they were kindred spirits.
After making the introduction and participating in the polite exchange of pleasantries, I sat back to observe what I sensed would be inspired interaction between these gifted women, who were a generation apart and had been exposed to vastly different perspectives. I doubt Louisa would have brought up the fact that she had been a nurse at the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., but Winnie did and asked her questions about the experience. None of us had any idea then that within the next year Louisa would succumb to effects of mercury poisoning she had contracted during that wartime service. The thought occurs to me now, as it has before: Had Louisa May Alcott not died, Winnie might have kept her commitment to marry me and live in Syracuse. Being within reasonable proximity of that calm wisdom, where Winnie could count on finding encouragement for her own literary pursuits, would have helped offset the tedium of living so closely with less interesting and more demanding female in-laws.
During that visit, as though she realized there would not be another, Louisa allowed herself to be drawn out by Winnie’s brash curiosity. Was it true she had been tutored by the naturalist Henry David Thoreau?
“I had lessons from him, but my education was chiefly in the hands of my father.”
Was her father the model for Mr. March?
“No,” Louisa smiled in my direction. “I based the March girls’ father on my uncle, Samuel May, who was Fred’s grandfather.”
Winnie glanced at me with reproach. How could I have kept this fascinating information from her? I knew how she felt; every now and then, when she would casually refer to some remarkable incident that had to do with her family in particular or the South in general, I would wonder why she hadn’t revealed that nugget to me before. She and Louisa spent at least an hour discussing books, particularly novels. Winnie described one that had been written by a woman who had been reared in the North before coming South with her husband, where she led a life of some hardship; Louisa remarked that the woman must have been quite resourceful to find the time and energy to give voice to her own inner muse.
“I can’t imagine how she managed it all, especially with such a terrible husband,” Winnie said. “I would want to get rid of a husband who tried to stifle me.”
We were sitting, the three of us, beneath Louisa’s arbor. I had been lulled by the cadence of their conversation and the pleasant surroundings. “What do you mean by ‘get rid of’?” I asked.
Winnie turned to me as though she’d forgotten I was there. She said, “Women can easily do away with husbands. A dash of calomel in his morning coffee, day after day for several months, should accomplish the deed where no one would be the wiser.” She wasn’t smiling, nor was I.
Louisa came to our rescue. “Winnie is right; it would not be difficult, if the husband is trusting of the hand that prepares his meals. Who knows how many times a woman has got away with murder and felt no guilt because of the way she was mistreated, or imagined she was? But I believe most of our gender are inclined to be nurturing; therefore, they put up with those difficult husbands and, in fact, take just as good care of them as they would the worthwhile fellows. Some women don’t realize how lucky they are, to get the latter variety, because they’ve had no experience with the other.”
Winnie sprang up—she had been sitting on the ground, literally at Louisa’s feet—and came to me and put her arm around my waist. Then, her face close to mine, she said, as solemnly as though repeating a vow, “I am quite aware of how lucky I am, to be spoken for by a man of the utmost worthwhile variety. Darling Fred, I promise to try not to be the death of you.”
Louisa’s eyes were shining with tears. She said it was a joy for her to witness such love between her favorite young man and his chosen young lady.
When I informed Winnie of Louisa’s death, she wrote to my mother. The last sentences of that note of condolence puzzled the recipient and enlightened me more about the nature of my beloved: “I admired the beautiful, productive life your cousin Louisa had made for herself, with her art as its central focus. She had the loving security of being surrounded by family, without the complications and strictures of matrimony; and whenever she wished, she could retreat into solitude.”
My secretary has brought in the morning mail, which included a package from a stranger. The contents are a notebook such as a grade school student might use, and this letter:
Dear Mr. Wilkinson, Sir:
For several years, I was employed as a maid by Mrs. Jefferson Davis. That service ended last fall, when I married. I felt badly about leaving her, but my husband-to-be did not require me to earn wages and wished me to become a housewife in my own right. I have heard, recently, that Mrs. Davis is severely afflicted with prostration of the heart. That sad news has made me aware that I must unburden myself of a responsibility I perhaps should never have taken on in the first place.
This notebook, which contains personal reflections of her late daughter, has been in my possession since September 18, 1898, which you may recall was Miss Winnie Davis’s last day on earth. I helped care for her during what would be her final illness and was at her bedside when she passed away. Although Mrs. Davis is practically a doctor herself when it comes to medicating, she did not spend a lot of time in the sick room with her daughter. I believe the lady must have known Winnie was not going to come out of this one, and she could not face the prospect of losing her.
During those last weeks of Winnie’s life, I had seen her scribbling in this notebook or rereading what she’d written in it at an earlier time. Soon after she died, I retrieved the thing from beneath that hotel bed, where I had seen her put it. I’m ashamed to say, curiosity got the best of me, and I read it. Then I was in a quandary as to what to do with the notebook, as I knew Mrs. Davis might have a seizure on seeing some of what her daughter had written here, and also, I was aware that Winnie had not wanted her mother to know of its existence. I almost gave it to the other daughter when she came to stay with Mrs. Davis after Winnie died, but I thought better of that idea. If Mrs. Hayes decided to pass the book on to her mother, or even mentioned it to her, I would have some explaining to do. Next, I thought of their distant cousin who was Winnie’s best friend, Mrs. Pulitzer. What stopped me there is, I am pretty sure that Winnie, although she was a writer by trade, would not want these musings to be published. But Mrs. Pulitzer’s husband, since he owns a newspaper and Winnie and her mother had worked for him, might have a different opinion on that subject.
Mr. Wilkinson, whatever feelings you may harbor toward Miss Winnie Davis, I know you are a gentleman and that you will respect her privacy, and not share this journal with others. Winnie and I had only one significant discussion about you, which took place a few days before she passed away. My recollections of that exchange and the last day of her life are recorded in several loose pages from my own diary, which will be folded into the same envelope with this letter.
When Mrs. Pulitzer’s maid pointed you out to me standing off by yourself at Winnie’s funeral, I saw on your face the same steadfast, grieving love I’d seen just a few days before on hers, when Winnie was speaking about you to me. I resolved then to send you her last writings, but I never could get up my nerve. Now that Mrs. Davis is not long for this world, it seems an appropriate time.
With every good wish,
and I pray I am doing the right thing,
Margaret Connelly Black (Mrs. Alton Black)
Occasionally, I have the midday meal in my office. Earlier, before my secretary brought the mail to me, I had asked her to place an order for me with a restaurant in the adjacent building. I shall wait until the repast has been delivered and consumed, and the tray has been cleared away, before I commence to read Winnie’s journal.
By then it will be her favorite time of day. I am remembering one golden afternoon beside a brook at Beauvoir, in sultry, stalwart Mississippi, when she quoted to me a line from Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”: “In the afternoon they came unto a land, in which it seemed always afternoon.”
Then, without taking her eyes from my face, she removed the pins from her hair and shook it free. As she began to unfasten the buttons of her primly high-necked blouse, I knew that this afternoon, and this girl, would be with me always.