Eleven. De la Terre à la Lune
Eleven
De la Terre à la Lune
The Boston Athenaeum, June 12, 1865
As the China ’s date of departure fast approached, Henrietta and Charlotte asked Constance Davenish to meet them at the Athenaeum across from the Stevenson home.
The private library, one of the oldest in the country, had been founded by a literary society once led by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s father. Fronted by a unique neo-Palladian sandstone facade, the Athenaeum comprised three separate floors of books, sculptures, and paintings. George Washington’s Mount Vernon library was largely housed there, and famous learned members over the decades had included Emerson himself, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Quincy Adams, and Margaret Fuller.
The library interior was as delicate and dreamy as a wedding cake, with ornate wrought-iron spiral staircases, trellis Juliet balconies, and dark leather volumes set against creamy alabaster walls. Entering the second-floor reading room, Henrietta and Charlotte immediately spotted Constance’s head of voluminous black hair above that of the other patrons. She was seated at a long table divided lengthwise by a tripod shelf displaying the most current newspapers and periodicals.
“Don’t tell us Papa has you tallying up shipwrecks, too,” Charlotte only half joked as she and Henrietta sat down on either side of her.
“That poor man.”
“He requisitioned two junior clerks to pull this month’s listings of maritime disasters.” Henrietta shook her head. “It doesn’t bode well.”
“He’ll come around. He cares most for your happiness, after all.”
“Even if we define the notion differently from him?” asked Charlotte.
Constance shrugged. “We all do. I myself am happy with a battle well fought, if not won. What is it Pericles says about bravery? Going out undeterred to meet what is come?”
“Father wants a clear horizon,” Charlotte explained. “Never a worry in sight. He would banish all worry if he could.”
“But he has not said no for certain? C’est bon —there is still time then. And what is first on your itinerary?”
The sisters began enumerating the many sights in London that they hoped to see.
“When at Fortnum and Mason, you must remember to stop in at Hatchards, the Royal bookshop next door.”
Henrietta removed a small journal and Faber pencil from her reticule; Constance was always full of suggestions worth copying down.
“John Hatchard used his shop for anti-slavery protests,” she continued. “Many great men and women of their time gathered in the back parlor, quite like Beacon Hill. And the selection in England far exceeds our own.”
“You must give us your reading list,” offered Henrietta.
“Dumas’s newest, La San Felice , for one. And any Jules Verne—the translations here are so poorly done.” Constance was proficient in several languages, having spent her formative years on the Continent. “ De la Terre à la Lune is all the rage over there.”
“‘From the Earth to the Moon,’” translated Charlotte. “What’s it about?”
“A Baltimore gun club full of Civil War veterans and weapons enthusiasts—can you imagine?—try to launch three men onto the moon using a giant space gun in Tampa Town. But Verne has been quoted in the press as saying it’s really about us—about our war.”
Henrietta’s face lit up. She had a keen interest in anything strategic or military. “How so?”
“Verne wonders how we might pull together again. Now that we’re done trying to kill each other, that is. Oh, and do look out for Sir Burton’s account of Dahomey— A Mission to Gelele —from last year.”
“The Amazons of West Africa.” Charlotte nodded in recognition. “You told us about them—women who fight even better than the men. Imagine being allowed that !”
The Stevenson sisters had to wonder: If they had been born in another time and place, what would have been their lot? Warriors, concubines, slaves? Would they have suffered more—experienced even less freedom? William Stevenson dared his girls to find examples of a better life than theirs, but lack of travel made that difficult to do—perhaps that was even the point. Meanwhile, all the men of their society continued to praise the necessity of women’s protection, and the safety and sanctity of home.
Before leaving for another engagement, Constance made the sisters promise to attend her upcoming weekly salon. Henrietta stayed behind in the reading room to research more naval history, hoping to converse with Admiral Austen about his exploits at sea, while Charlotte headed to the top-floor paintings gallery.
The Stevenson sisters had practically grown up inside the Athenaeum, whose red-leather brass-studded front door was across the street from their own. Harry had been seven years old, and Charlotte only two, when the cornerstone of the present building had been laid in 1847—the same year they lost their mother. Charlotte had no memories of Alice at all, but Henrietta occasionally shared hers, tiptoeing around those final, dark-bedroom, must-be-a-good-girl days.
Charlotte ascended the green wrought-iron spiral staircase to the third floor and headed straight for the unfinished portrait of George Washington that dominated the gallery. The fragment of the president’s face, surrounded on two sides by white canvas, gave him a ghostly “half there” appearance as if he continued to paternally watch over them all.
Charlotte loved the painting of Washington for its very state of incompletion, whatever had been artist Gilbert Stuart’s reasons for that. In his lifetime, the great portraitist had done likenesses of presidents, kings, first ladies, Mohawk chiefs, chief justices, and over a thousand others, including Charlotte’s own father upon his call to the state bar. William Stevenson later recounted for his daughters how Stuart had painted him straight from life without any sketches, wittily conversing the entire time. William con ducted his own profession solely from the facts presented before him. With a note of envy, he had praised the intuitiveness of Stuart’s artistry: his complete immersion in the moment and comfort with uncertainty, his meeting undeterred whatever is to come.
Charlotte loved to act for these same reasons. Loved to feel her own self slip away—the thrilling unsteadiness of it all—and something new and unknown rise in its place. Not because she didn’t care for herself: quite the contrary. With her robust ego, Charlotte wanted to bring a little bit of her self to everyone else—to become all people—to experience both that strange birth and dominion. Perhaps that was why Sir Richard Burton and other explorers traversed the globe. It was intoxicating, the pull of the distant horizon, the chance to leave behind everything you know and impress your mark on something—or someone—else, be it for love or exploration.
In the meantime, girls like her and Harry were barely allowed out of state. What , Charlotte wondered, was the real reason for that? Why were so many solitary pursuits only suspect when pursued by women? Doctors had recently asserted that even writing—the mere penning of one’s thoughts or actions—was harmful to female health. Anything exciting or challenging was presented to women as a risk, a danger, a shame, when for men it was the very adventure and glory of life. How could something be so vastly different for one half of the world?
Charlotte wagged her finger at the painting—with her lively imagination, she could make anything feel real. Before her now stood George Washington, the father of their country, with his firmly set jaw and declaration of independence. It had been almost twenty years since women and anti-slavery activists had signed a declaration of their own at Seneca Falls:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.… in view of this entire disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country… we insist that [women] have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
Turning her back on the portrait, Charlotte returned to the twisting staircase and her sister in the reading stacks below. Lost to the resentments of her mind as well as her imagination, she took a step forward in her fashionable new boots and felt her own self slip out from under her.
Thomas Nash was leisurely strolling through the Common, enjoying the randomness of his summer recess days. He was soon to leave the city for a one-room cabin in the Adirondacks, where he looked forward to a spartan, Thoreau-like existence. He would fish and boat during the day and read by campfire at night. Currently he was knee-deep in Austen’s Mansfield Park , although struggling once again.
Fanny Price’s charms as a heroine always proved elusive. Lucie Manette and Hester Prynne, Elizabeth Bennet and Shakespeare’s Beatrice—all felt more real to Nash than the litany of potential brides made ever-present to him in Boston, whether at the opera or theater, the lyceum or even church, but the character of Fanny Price felt the least real of them all. Interestingly, Austen had followed Mansfield Park with Emma, whose title heroine was in many ways the ultimate Victorian woman: vitally attractive while still deeply attached to hearth and home.
Nash turned onto Beacon Street and saw the very real specter of Charlotte Stevenson leaning against the Athenaeum front door, a black lace-up boot in one hand.
“Are you in need of assistance?” he called out.
Charlotte looked up and down Beacon Street as if hoping to see someone else. “I broke a heel,” she finally called back.
“I shouldn’t wonder.” Nash missed the delicate satin slippers of the past. Many Boston women had lately taken to wearing heeled walking boots in the style of their British counterparts, as if intent on traipsing about the moors themselves. “Let me help you home.”
“I can manage.”
“It’s too far in your condition.”
“It’s eighty-nine paces,” Charlotte replied. “I’ve counted—with all my idle time.”
The chill in her demeanor was unmistakable. For the past year, Nash had enjoyed their moments together, Charlotte’s quick humor and teasing manner, the fresh beauty she so boldly displayed. But lately she seemed to regard Nash as an enemy to the sisters’ plans, from lectures and all-male receptions to transatlantic voyages. He suddenly felt less like a man around her and more like someone with the ear of her father—someone not to be trusted.
“This is foolishness.” Nash bounded up the Athenaeum steps to take her arm, and Charlotte made a low growl of irritation in response.
“If you mention this to Father…”
“Oh, I see.” He smiled in understanding. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your travel, I promise.”
“Charlie!”
Nash and Charlotte both turned to see Henrietta rushing toward them from the direction of the Common. “I went to get some air,” she explained upon reaching the steps, her face deeply flushed. “Whatever happened?”
“I tripped on the staircase heading down. This weak ankle of mine.”
“The only part that’s weak.” Henrietta smoothed Charlotte’s tousled hair and took the broken boot from her as Nash helped her to the street. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”
“I know such boots are the fashion now,” conceded Nash as they walked together, “but what would you do if this happened on board ship?”
“What would you do?” was Charlotte’s quick retort.
“Fair enough.” Reaching the Stevenson townhome, he gazed up admiringly, even enviously, at the impressive brownstone before them. Nash had no real home of his own, only fashionable but rented rooms near the courthouse. “What if I were to move up my own travels and chaperone—would that fix things for you?”
“It begs the very question,” Charlotte curtly answered him.
“Justice Nash, consider, do all gentlemen disappear when women travel?” Henrietta stated her question as if in formal debate. “Is everyone we encounter a threat? If so, then isn’t forcing us to rely on the protection of others foolhardy at best?”
Thomas Nash didn’t know what to say to that. Henrietta could clearly hold her own with any of the law clerks at the courthouse, and he recalled the similar rhetorical skill of the Girl Orator. He had attended Anna Dickinson’s recent Music Hall lecture out of curiosity, in the manner of visiting a new exotic animal at the zoo, only to walk away with a dismal view of current relations between women and men. Was this why he loved the world of Austen’s novels, where everyone knew their place and happily stuck to it? Or did he simply work with too many old men, full of too many old ideas?
All Nash knew was that his professional life had been a success: what he didn’t have was a wife and family with whom to share it. In the wake of change wrought by war, women seemed as transformed as the men. Boston’s female populace was dividing into battle camps of their own: the simpering ones, sinking under the weight of society’s expectations, and those like the Stevenson sisters, champing at the bit to be free—which Nash feared meant free of men. What on earth was going on, and what might such discord mean for him?