Chapter Two #2
Elizabeth sat at one end, with their vulgar, socially ambitious stepmother to her right.
Clarissa’s spot would normally belong to the guest of honor, but Lillian did not consider herself a guest in this house.
Though Jerome had moved his mother to a fine house on Louisburg Square when he and Elizabeth were married, Lillian considered her son’s residence to be an extension of her royal palace.
Lillian—silver-haired, stout, and haughty—was enthroned at the other end of the table, opposite Elizabeth, with her goddaughter, Judith Fairchild, to her right.
Mrs. Fairchild had recently returned to Boston after a number of years abroad, and Anna had been observing her with a mix of apprehension and grudging respect for her audacity.
“Judith, dear, what do you hear from Emily?” Lillian asked, referring to the stepdaughter Judith had deposited at a Parisian boarding school before returning to America. (Unfortunately for Judith, Emily was thirteen, too old to be swaddled in blankets and left on the convent steps.)
“She is marvelous. I am so very glad she is with the Sisters at Sacré Coeur.” Judith clasped her hands together and beamed at the ceiling, like a saint in a Renaissance painting.
Though Reginald Fairchild had been dead for years, Judith still wore mourning, which lent her an air of devotion to her husband’s memory that she certainly did not feel.
(The blond, fair-skinned beauty likely also knew how well she looked in black.)
“I know some worry they make Papists out of their students, but there are many nice Protestant girls there,” she continued. “Emily is growing up pure of heart, blossoming into a perfect specimen of Christian womanhood.”
“And you credit her school with this?” asked Annette Patterson, one of Elizabeth’s cleverer friends. Her face was the picture of innocence, but Anna knew what she left unsaid … Or did this moral purity result from the vast ocean that separates you?
“Oh, I do indeed. I must say, I fear for American girls. Mothers have become so consumed with the intellectual standards of their daughters’ instructors, they fail to investigate their morals.”
Touché. Annette Patterson’s daughter, who had inherited her mother’s cleverness, attended a demanding school far more focused on academics than moral training.
Anna violently disagreed with Judith, but she could not help being impressed by the way she had made a virtue of her choice for her stepdaughter, and a vice of any other.
Meanwhile, Lillian looked on her goddaughter with unblemished fondness.
Anna had long suspected that Lillian once hoped her son and Judith would make a match.
When Jerome married Elizabeth instead, and Judith hastily attached herself to the widower Mr. Fairchild (richer than Croesus, with one foot in the grave), it suggested she had harbored the same hope.
A notorious flirt before her marriage, and a famous philanderess during, Mrs. Fairchild had left for Europe with her reputation in tatters.
Now she was back, having artfully recast herself as an expert in “Christian mothering.” Lillian recently rhapsodized about a pamphlet Judith had written on the topic and presented at the Chilton Club.
Anna had felt sorry for Mr. Fairchild, as she assumed he was the only man in Boston unaware of his wife’s behavior.
(Lillian Demarest was the only woman.) When he died, it emerged that, in fact, he had not been so blind.
He had tied up all of his money in a trust for Emily and Henry, the son Judith had managed to produce before he died.
To extract anything beyond her meager allowance required Judith to appeal to the trustee.
Though no one was sure of the precise terms, the trust evidently contained provisions regarding his widow’s moral conduct, which explained her recent transformation.
“I cannot comprehend all this ambition for our daughters,” Mrs. Fairchild continued. “What more could a woman want than to preside over the household realm, to make her home a sanctuary, to fashion and mold the souls of their children? Why, civilization rests on our feminine shoulders!”
“Not all women marry, Mrs. Fairchild,” Annette said, a touch of remonstrance in her voice. A few of the women glanced at Anna.
“Well, of course not, but there are vocations for such women,” Lillian cut in. “Eugenia Lockwood, for example, is doing marvelous work at her settlement house. Elizabeth, you are volunteering there, are you not?”
“Yes, and she is indeed doing good work. In fact, my sister attended her conversation series this morning. I’m sorry I have not asked, Anna. How was it?”
“Quite interesting,” Anna replied, resisting the temptation to throw her salad plate across the room.
Anna generally avoided Eugenia’s “conversations,” which were inspired by a similar series sponsored by Margaret Fuller fifty years ago.
Anna’s and Eugenia’s late mothers grew up together in Concord, and Anna was irritated by Eugenia’s proprietary attitude about all things relating to that town’s rich history, particularly Margaret Fuller.
Anna only went this morning because it was the one chance she had to see her friend Irma Bellingham, who was in town from New York.
The event started off well enough. Anna entered the sumptuously decorated Trustees Room at the public library, which Eugenia had secured through some connection.
Looking around at the marble wainscotting and mantel, and the paintings of Charles I and Benjamin Franklin, she had the marvelous feeling of having invaded some masculine sanctum.
Irma waved her over, and Anna slid into the seat she had saved.
“It’s like a gathering of Cee-Bees, but with gray hair and spectacles!
” Irma whispered. Anna smiled at Irma’s use of their old college term for the “career-bound.” Girls at Radcliffe had been supportive of each other, regardless of whether they planned to marry or pursue a career.
They faced enough hostility from the multitudes who disapproved of women attending college at all.
That said, since career and marriage were mutually exclusive, except in the rarest circumstances, the girls who were firmly committed to pursuing a profession had shared a special bond.
Eugenia stood at the front of the room, looking, as always, like a cartoon bluestocking in her severe dark skirt, thick round glasses, and hair pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense bun.
Anna had timed her arrival to coincide with the beginning of the meeting.
Eugenia never failed to ask Anna about the Fuller biography (in a tone that would be appropriate for a thesis advisor speaking to a doctoral student), and she was too raw for unwanted questions.
Naturally, she got one anyway.
For the benefit of those attending for the first time, Eugenia briefly described Margaret Fuller’s “Conversations” from the 1840s, then gestured to Anna.
“I see Miss Bradley is here. She and her father, Professor James Bradley, have been working on a biography of Margaret Fuller.” She looked at Anna and added, “I heard your father is retiring. I hope he will see this through to completion.”
Anna felt her face grow warm. “I’m certain he will continue to help.” She figured it was true enough. After all, if she asked Father a question, Clarissa might at least permit him to answer it. Eugenia’s brows came together, suggesting she was not satisfied with Anna’s response, but she moved on.
As the session was coming to its close, Anna gestured to Irma that they should slip out immediately, but they were no match for Eugenia, who made a beeline for them.
“Anna, can I speak to you about the Fuller biography?”
“I’m afraid I must go, Eugenia. My sister is expecting me.”
Eugenia ignored the rebuff. “You sounded uncertain about your father’s involvement. The fiftieth anniversary of Fuller’s death is two years away. I hope it will be finished by then.”
Anna managed a smile and a mumbled “As do I,” and she and Irma made their escape.
“That woman has the social instincts of a mountain goat,” Irma said under her breath, as they walked down the grand staircase.
Anna saw Irma to her train and then walked home, with a literal dark cloud over her head. (That the cloud then opened up and drenched Anna struck her as an extremely overwrought metaphor.)
Meanwhile, Judith had turned the subject back to the virtues of convent life.
“Until she was old enough to go to Sacré Coeur, I made sure Emily was exposed to only the purest books. I was relieved to learn that the Sisters do not permit the girls to read anything, not even letters from their mothers, before they read them themselves.”
“What do you think we should read to our little girls?” Serena Lawrence asked anxiously. “My Ruthie is nearly five.” Serena, a contemporary of Anna’s, was a great beauty and a bit feather-witted, but Anna had always liked her.
“You are right to ask, Mrs. Lawrence. It is astonishing what poison is being poured into our daughters’ minds!”
Poured into their minds? Anna wondered. How? Through their ears?
“As it happens, I am writing a pamphlet on the subject, but in the meantime, I recommend Sophie May’s books, Little Prudy in particular. When Emily was little, she found it utterly captivating.”
Anna held back a laugh. Since Elizabeth was not much of a reader, Anna had slipped into the role of Julia’s personal librarian.
Lillian had given her granddaughter a copy of Little Prudy, and Julia was not in the least captivated by it.
Moral instruction always made her wiggle, and while delivered with a lighter hand in Little Prudy than some books, the lessons in piety, virtue, and self-sacrifice were not subtle enough for Julia’s sharp ear for didacticism.
“At least Prudy is naughty sometimes,” Julia had conceded, though she considered the character’s transgressions so minor, she found her penitent tears and prayers for forgiveness to be very tiresome.