Chapter Three
Washington, DC
JULIA
“I feel sorry for them,” Victoria said, peering at the clams in the pot. “They live their whole lives in a shell, hiding under the sand, hoping nobody notices them, and now this.”
“How’s that different from being a girl?” Lucy grumbled. “Isn’t everyone always telling us to stay at home and do nothing to attract notice?”
“We don’t get boiled over fires, though,” Victoria said.
Lucy nodded, though she privately thought Victoria was setting the mark a bit low.
FROM LIBERTY ISLAND, BY MISS CRANE
Julia had her first moment of anxiety when she looked down from the Capitol steps. The suffrage parade was supposed to start in a few minutes, but spectators still swarmed Pennsylvania Avenue.
She and Louisa were staying with the Seabornes, and before they left the house, Michael’s mother had given them a warning: “They were clever to plan the suffrage march on the eve of the inauguration, given the ready-made audience. But inaugurations are such spectacles, girls. The crowd will not be very respectable. Do be careful.”
Julia promised, but she had not been worried. The police department had announced that they planned to assign more men to the suffrage parade than to President-Elect Wilson’s actual inauguration. Perhaps they had, but the officers seemed awfully lackadaisical.
Louisa also looked concerned. “I can’t make out what the policemen are doing. Whatever it is, they’re not in much of a hurry to do it.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Mina said, but the glint in her eye was as much a sign of trouble as Louisa’s wrinkled brow.
The start was delayed by almost a half hour, but the police eventually moved the crowd back, and finally, Julia, Mina, and Louisa were walking arm in arm down the broad avenue.
Julia felt a thrill at the pageantry. The floats were elegant, and the women, who had come from all over the country, representing so many different groups, were proud and dignified. It was marvelous to finally be taking some action.
Two years ago, Julia had taken up the fight to allow freshmen to join Barnard’s Suffrage Club.
She wrote an editorial for the Barnard Bulletin, arguing that it made no sense to create a barrier against women who were not just willing but actually yearning to stand arm in arm with other women, to immerse themselves in the cause.
When she circulated a petition, however, Mina refused to sign it. In addition to her usual excuse—I’m not a joiner, Duchess—she insisted it would be “all talk.”
Julia’s campaign succeeded, but while she’d never admit it to Mina, the meetings were a bit unsatisfying. She sensed that many of the club’s members lived in fear of people recoiling in horror at their demands, and they spent much of their time crafting hypothetical responses.
Julia’s father and brother were routinely horrified by women’s desire for new freedoms, so she had developed some immunity against this particular fear.
She never felt like she needed perfect arguments to counter their bluster.
She would merely ask, But why shouldn’t women have equal rights?
Their inevitable pathetic stammering felt like a victory.
Parade organizers had warned the women that many spectators would be unsympathetic, and to expect some jeering.
A large crowd, even if hostile, would bring lots of needed publicity, and as long as the spectators stayed behind the wire stanchion, they could even welcome the boos and hisses, knowing it was helping the cause.
But the spectators did not stay behind the wire stanchion.
Julia, Mina, and Louisa had made it a few blocks before progress began to stall, and a half a block later, they came to a complete halt. Julia could not see what impeded them, but word soon spread through the procession.
“The crowd broke through the barriers at Fourth Street,” a woman ahead called back. “The police are making a wedge with motorcars to lead us through.”
“What? That will be even worse for everyone in the back,” Louisa said. “They have to get people behind the curb line again.”
Julia agreed. The police acting as an ice cutter would only protect those at the head of the procession.
“Oh, this is an adventure!” Mina said, her eyes alight.
They began to move again, but sure enough, while those in the front followed safely behind the police escort, the crowd simply filled in behind them.
As they neared Fourth Street, Julia could hear the din of shouting and jeering, and soon she saw hordes of men pouring onto the parade route from every direction.
What at first was a mass of people, a cacophony of voices, soon became individual men’s angry faces and clear, furious insults. Go home where you belong! Disgrace!
Though they were surrounded, an instinct seemed to move telepathically through the women. Keep moving forward. Maintain your dignity. Somehow they pressed ahead, though very slowly, and while they previously had taken up the entire breadth of the wide avenue, now they had to walk in twos or threes.
It was afternoon on a broad thoroughfare, but it might as well have been three o’clock in the morning in one of the worst neighborhoods in Boston or New York.
The rage, taunts, and sudden, uncertain movements of the crowd, along with the ubiquitous odor of alcohol, gave it the feel of a massive incipient barroom brawl.
Julia felt something hit her skirt and looked down to see tobacco juice.
A mounted policeman nearby not only seemed disinclined to intervene on their behalf but looked downright amused.
The only assistance came from Boy Scouts armed with batons.
They tried valiantly to push the men back but were hopelessly outnumbered.
Julia raised her chin, tightened her grip on Mina’s and Louisa’s hands, determined to stick together and press on, but the crowd hemmed in tighter and tighter until Julia was forced to release Mina’s hand.
The jostling, spitting, and jeering continued. Louisa’s expression was resolute, her spine straight, but she was pale, and Julia felt a stab of worry. Louisa was so small, and she had never outgrown her sickly constitution. She ushered Louisa behind her and held tightly to her hand.
A moment later, someone knocked into them. Julia felt a yank, and Louisa was pulled away by the force of the crowd. She turned, her instinct to move forward overcome by the greater need to find her friend.
“Louisa!” Julia yelled. “LOUISA!”
Ignoring the menacing laughter and mocking faces, she stood on tiptoes, leaning one way and then another, trying to see over the wall of men. When she spotted a gap in the crowd, her heart seized, as a vision of Louisa trampled flashed through her mind.
Propelled by panic, she pushed her way back until she reached the edge of the open circle she had detected. At its center was Louisa, crumpled on the ground, blood pouring from a wound on her head.
“Oh, dear God.” Julia fell to her knees by Louisa’s side.
Louisa groaned, and she felt a wave of relief.
She looked up and scanned the faces to see if anyone looked helpful.
The men had taken a few steps back—not out of common decency, she suspected, but rather to distance themselves from the catastrophe.
“Somebody, please get help!”
Julia shifted to sit mermaid style, lifted Louisa’s head onto her lap, and gingerly brushed her hair aside to better see the wound. She knew head cuts bled a great deal, but this was gushing. Unsure if Louisa might have sustained other injuries, she dared not move her.
Julia removed the yellow scarf from around her neck and blotted at the wound, then looked up again, her anger boiling over.
“Why are you all just standing there?” she yelled. “Is there not one decent man among you who will go for help?”
Suddenly, Mina appeared, stopped dead in her tracks, and then looked around at the circle of men who were still gawping at them.
“You beasts! You … you monsters!” Mina yelled, as other women from the procession began crowding in. Julia sighed. This was so unhelpful.
“Mina, keep the girls moving. Tell them to look for help.” At Mina’s equivocal expression, Julia’s exasperation overflowed. “Mina, please! Keep them MOVING!”
Finally, Mina began taking women by the arm, one by one, and leading them back to the procession. “Keep going, look for help,” she repeated, over and over.
Louisa’s eyes opened. She blinked at the sky, and then took in Julia’s face.
“Keep going, Ju,” she said weakly.
“You are such a goose,” Julia said, stroking her head.
The Barnard group had been toward the rear of the procession, so the crowd mercifully began to thin out.
Unfortunately, this also had the effect of making Julia and Louisa more visible.
Seconds after Julia spotted a Red Cross van coming from one direction, she saw a photographer worming his way toward them from another.
She prayed the ambulance would get to them first, but they arrived at the same time. Two men jumped from the back of the van, and as they prepared to load Louisa onto a stretcher, the photographer raised his camera to take a picture.
“Please don’t,” Julia said.
“No, let him,” Mina said. “People should see what these men have wrought.”
“Don’t show her face, then,” Julia begged.
As she got into the ambulance with Louisa, Julia scolded herself for her stupidity. She had spent enough time with Michael’s newspaper family to know that a photographer only cared about requests from one person: his editor.
Early that evening, Julia sat beside Louisa’s bed with a feeling of unpleasant anticipation. Julia’s brother had come to town for the inauguration, and the Seabornes had invited him and his fiancée, Pauline Powell, to dinner.
Julia had known she would not have a prayer of getting to know her future sister-in-law in William’s domineering presence, so she had called on Pauline yesterday at her family’s home in Alexandria, Virginia.