3
New Orleans
June 1829
“Emily chérie,do come here, please. I’d like you to meet some of my husband’s clients from the chandlery.” A gentle hand was touching my arm. It was my hostess, Madame de Saumur.
And with these words, my life was changed forever.
It was a warm, humid summer evening in New Orleans. I was eighteen years old, attending a glittering reception in the French Quarter to honor a visiting government o?cial from France, the usual New Orleans socialites in attendance. Bored to distraction, I wondered when my younger sister, Dorothy, and I could politely slip away with our chaperone, Eurydice.
To my surprise, Madame de Saumur was ?anked by two scruffy-looking men dressed in shabby homespun clothes. Their greasy, unkempt hair was too long; their rough, weathered hands were calloused, their ?ngernails grimy. Even madame’s slaves, circulating with trays of food in their carefully pressed livery and immaculate white gloves, were a startling contrast to the two rustics by her side.
“Chérie,” she implored me in French, still smiling for the men’s sake. “Please chat for a while with these people, will you? Jean-Philippe invited them. I don’t know what he was thinking. They are here from Key West, a little settlement in the Florida Territory. Your English is perfect—so much better than mine. Do take them off my hands.”
Switching back to her heavily accented English, she introduced the elder of the two as Captain George Lee, and his companion, a Bahamian carpenter and ?sherman, as Martin Lowry.
“Imagine, they’ve come all the way from a little island south of the mainland of Florida. Gentlemen, this is Emily Dinsmore, one of New Orleans’s most beautiful young debutantes. Her grandparents are among my dearest friends.” Looking at Martin, she added, “Her father was one of your countrymen—from the Bahamas. Isn’t that correct, Emily?”
Having been raised to be unfailingly polite, I nodded mutely. Before I could say anything, she ?ashed her inimitable smile and ?uttered away like a hummingbird.
Oblivious to the amused looks and murmurs from other guests, Captain Lee let his attention wander around the ballroom, taking in its prodigious art and elegant furnishings. The younger man, Martin, however, looked only at me. No doubt in an effort to avoid staring rudely at my ample bosom, he ?xed his gaze instead on my eyes.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Dinsmore,” he said, bowing courteously. A con?dent smile revealed perfect white teeth, which contrasted sharply with the deep color of his face.
I don’t know why he intrigued me, but I found myself responding to his pleasantries, despite his rustic appearance. At ?rst, I was taken aback by his voice, for he spoke in the same accent as my late father, who’d been raised in Harbour Island. Martin Lowry’s disheveled hair wreathed an unmistakably handsome face, and though his appearance was ragged, he spoke like a gentleman. I quickly realized he was better educated than an average ?sherman or carpenter of that time.
He asked about my parents, and I told him about my father, a lawyer with wrecking interests who had settled in New Orleans, and of my French mother, who died giving birth to my sister, Dorothy. “Your speech,” I said shyly, “is very like that of my father.”
“I would like to meet him. It’s possible that we know many of the same people.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. He drowned while traveling aboard a ship bound for New York City some years ago. It was wrecked on a shoal during a storm.”
He lowered his eyes respectfully. “I’m sorry. Did it happen on the Gulf Coast? I know many a storm ?nds you here.”
“No. A hurricane off Cape Hatteras.”
Captain Lee, who had been inattentive until that point, nodded knowingly. “Aye, Hatteras is a demon place for ships,” he said, seeming eager now to join our conversation.
Stealing a discreet glance at Martin Lowry, I reckoned him to be older than I by about ?fteen years. He was also at least a head taller. His hair was tawny-colored, streaked by the sun; his eyes, like mine, were an intense blue; and I noted a sprinkling of freckles under his deeply tanned skin, which lent him an ingenuous charm.
The captain looked to be in his late thirties. Like Martin, he was tall and sinewy, with rough features. Creases had etched his sun-charred skin, particularly around his green eyes, and his hair was beginning to thin. His accent was deeply northeastern. “Quite a place they have here,” the captain marveled as he took in the enormous Baccarat chandeliers with their ?ickering candles. “Quite a place.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “The owners have very re?ned tastes.” Our host, Jean-Philippe de Saumur, was a wealthy third-generation
Frenchman who had made his fortune importing ?ne furnishings.
“What is it that brings you to New Orleans?” I asked Lee.
“I’ve come to buy rigging to out?t some boats we’ll be usin’ as supply tenders for lighthouses in the Florida Territory. My mate Martin here came along to help.”
“Have you many lighthouses around Key West?”
The men smiled. “Not many,” Martin said. “There are only three for the whole area right now, but we expect more will be built in the next year or so. When the United States acquired the Florida Territory, they opened a naval depot in Key West. Marine tra?c is growing by the day, so ships traveling our waters will be sorely in need of them.”
“Oh? Are there so many dangers to passing vessels in your part of Florida?” I asked.
“Aye, there most certainly are.” The captain grinned. I confess his expression took me slightly aback, since we were discussing potential disasters. “We’ve rid ourselves of the pirates, but there are shallow waters throughout the Florida Keys. And with our coral reef, wrecks are a common occurrence.”
To pass the time, the men and I chatted further about life in New Orleans since the Louisiana Purchase, and about Key West’s future as a new American territory. Barely twenty-?ve years had passed since the United States had acquired Louisiana, and Americans were becoming ?rmly entrenched in France’s former holding. Yet, the crème of New Orleans’s elite—people like my grandparents and our host, Jean-Philippe de Saumur—had been born in the old Louisiana and were ?rmly of French heritage.
“Well,” the captain laughed, “that’s all changing. Once we Americans get hold of a territory, we tend to make our mark.” Martin must have noticed my annoyance, for he tactfully changed the subject. “You mentioned a sister. Is she here this evening?”
“Yes,” I replied, relieved by his question. I pointed her out. “She’s the girl with the blond curls in the blue dress, over by the piano.”
Dorothy—unlike me—was very outgoing. Now she was engaged in ?irtatious conversation with a young man from a wealthy New Orleans family.
“Ah”—Martin nodded—“the young lady who has been singing this evening.”
“Yes,” I said. “And she has always been the beauty of the family. She’s just fourteen! We are all very proud of her.”
But Martin seemed unimpressed with this—his gaze had already returned to my face.
Monsieur de Saumur ?nally arrived to extricate me. Bidding the Key Westers a good evening, I stepped out for some fresh air on the spacious jasmine-scented terrace. It was easy to dismiss the loud captain from my mind, but the memory of his handsome mate lingered still.
“You’re wrong, you know,” said a voice behind me.
I wheeled around, recognizing the Bahamian lilt. Smiling, he said, “Your sister isn’t the family beauty. You are, by far.”
I felt a blush of heat ?ll my cheeks; I lowered my eyes. “You ?atter me.”
“Hardly,” said Martin. “I suspect you know how beautiful you are.”
I smiled but said nothing. Without Captain Lee to control the conversation, Martin proved himself much more inclined to talk. Although he worked as a ?sherman and was not much interested in books, I soon learned he had attended an Anglican school in the Bahamas, which accounted for his precise speech. And I found myself looking past his appearance and listening with amusement to tales of his life in the Bahamas and Key West.
When I look back now, I see our meeting on that terrace as a moment suspended in time, a pivotal moment of my young life. Had I left then, the road would have taken a completely different turn. But, of course, I did not leave. I stayed, and smiled encouragement at Martin. What can I say? In one evening, he had captured my heart, when none of the prominent young men of New Orleans had been able to. Perhaps it was his age, which in my eyes lent him greater maturity, or his good looks and easy smile, but I fell hopelessly in love. When he called upon me at home the next day, I agreed to join him for a walk, and by the time he returned me home later that afternoon, he was calling me “my dearest Emily.”
Following a courtship of just a few weeks—closely supervised by Eurydice, and frowned upon by my family, Martin proposed marriage. We were just returning from a walk in the French Quarter when, noting that Eurydice had stopped to chat for a moment with a slave of her acquaintance, Martin boldly lifted my chin and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“Emily, I can’t bear the idea of going back to Key West without you. Would you come with me? As my wife?”
My heart surged with joy. “Yes,” I replied happily. “Oh yes!”
No one really approved of my choice. Eurydice made it known that she thought it foolish. And Dorothy was clearly displeased. “Sugar,” she drawled—for we always spoke English between us—“I ?nd him just as cute as a bug. But he’s so poor! And I shall just die if you leave me and go off to live in Key West, over in Florida. It’s so far.”
My grandparents were appalled. “You’re being a very foolish girl,” Grandmère said. “He is déclassé, has no manners, and no money. What’s more, he is a Protestant! You’ve nothing in common with such a man.”
My grandfather’s reaction was all the more ?erce, for he fell into the greatest show of his fury: utter silence. Grandpère would even rise from his chair and leave the room when Martin came to call. Even Gran—my father’s mother, Hester Dinsmore—who was then still living in Harbour Island, expressed bitter disappointment when she heard I intended to marry a man with no social status, despite the fact that he was Bahamian, like her. In her letters, she heaped blame on my maternal grandparents for allowing me to entertain such an idea.
“An old Bahamian family, but de?nitely not of our class,” she wrote to me of Martin. “And how on earth will the two of you manage? You’ll be as poor as church mice!”
But all this negativity only strengthened my resolve. I was young and thought little of money. And Martin had come into my life at a moment when other human desires were stirring in my young body. In the end, unable to bear the miasma of tension prevailing in her household, my grandmother ?nally persuaded Grandpère to consent and even grant me a small dowry. The only stipulation was that I would have to wait until the autumn. They were hoping that a few months of waiting would change my mind.
After the announcement of our betrothal, Martin returned to Key West with Captain Lee, and I did not see him again until he returned to New Orleans that autumn to marry me.
“We’ll have the rest of our lives together, dearest,” he assured me as he ran his hands through my thick chestnut-colored hair one last time.
Then he kissed me tenderly, and was gone.
We married in St. Louis Cathedral that October, within just four months of meeting, the exchange of our vows taking place afterward in the sacristy. Our wedding date had been decided on by Martin, to coincide with the departure of a mercantile schooner sailing from New Orleans that very day. The appropriately named Innocencia was bound for England, carrying a load of cotton, and had scheduled a brief stop in the port of Key West. After a somewhat stilted leave-taking of my grandparents, and many tearful hugs and kisses exchanged with Dorothy, I boarded the ship that afternoon with my new husband, and we immediately set sail for Florida.
“I’ll come often to visit you!” were Dorothy’s last words to me. Little did either of us know then what Key West had in store for her.
The arduous voyage to Key West was rendered miserable by the rough October thunderstorms and the discovery that I was prone to seasickness on rough waters. Indeed, so ill was I, we did not consummate our marriage until well after we arrived in Key West.