9
Key West
1829
The early days of my marriage were a huge disappointment. It was one thing to live in reduced circumstances; I had resigned myself to that. But as it turned out, I was not only poor; I was completely at the mercy of my husband: I was his property, just as Eurydice belonged to my grandparents. And I was stuck in Key West, impossibly far from my family and friends.
Weeks passed. I had no one to talk with except Mrs. Mallory, and she was always busy. Martin’s overnight ?shing trips had resumed, leaving me to quake with fear under the counterpane when other roomers rattled my doorknob. They knew my husband was often away, and did so not accidentally.
“Open the door,” one would regularly call out on his nightly return from the grog shops. “Yer husband ain’t around to know!”
“Let me in, darling. I’ve got something for ye,” another would cajole. And then I would hear his lascivious chuckle as he made his way to his room. Sometimes it would take a loud scolding from Mrs. Mallory to keep them quiet. “Sure, they mean nothing by it,” she assured me one morning after I complained. “If ever you opened the door, they’d be tongue-tied. Pay them no mind, child. They’re just out to tease you.”
Still, the whole situation was more than I could bear. My only contact with the rest of the world I had left behind was the arrival of the Isabelle,a ship that brought mail to Key West twice a month via the post o?ce in Charleston.
“I hate this place,” I admitted one day. “I want to go home. I miss my family. And I miss New Orleans.”
Martin ignored me, but I kept on: “There are no shops in this settlement. And the people are so crude! And there are no recitals or concerts … no theater.”
“Here now,” he said at ?rst, “give it time, dearest. Key West will be an important port someday. Quality folks are moving in.”
“But do we really want to live in this tiny, dreary place? Why don’t we move to some town on the mainland of Florida?”
He looked at me as if I were a stupid child. “What town? There’s St. Augustine, and some primitive Seminole Indian villages, and there’s Key West. That’s all! Do you want to live up with the Indians?” He broke into a laugh. “Yes, that would be interesting to see: you, fending off those Seminole braves with a parasol, dressed in your frilly petticoats and ?ne New Orleans gowns!”
I was about to vent my feelings further, but he gave me a stern look—I had never seen my husband glare in such a way before. “Anyway,” he said, “this is the way it is. Get used to it and stop acting like a pampered little rich girl.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. How little, I was starting to ask myself, did I know this man who’d so easily won my heart? In Key West, his ready smile and humor had virtually disappeared. In its place were now a ?rmly set jaw and a stubborn determination. It was to be the ?rst of many such arguments.
I eventually learned to hide my unhappiness and tried to appear cheerful, at least during the hours Martin was home. My feelings for him had turned ambivalent, but I was desperate for his company. We’d sometimes take short walks together, carefully sidestepping horse manure, chickens, stray dogs, and feral cats. I tried to make these walks happy events, but inevitably I found something negative to comment upon before I could stop myself. When I learned the island had been bought a few years previously from a Spaniard named Juan Salas by American businessman John Simonton for about two thousand dollars, I remarked tartly, “I think he paid too much.”
The Louisiana Purchase seemed like a good decision to me. I could even understand the Americans’ interest in the Florida Territory. But acquiring these tiny islands south of Florida made no sense.
“Please, Emily.” Martin sighed. “Leave off all this grumbling. It is becoming annoying.”
I learned that before the Spaniards, the islands had been inhabited by Indians, most of whom had coalesced by then into one tribe, the Seminoles. There were pirates, too, although most had been driven back to the Caribbean.
Yet for all the talk about Indians and pirates, the major threat to marine tra?c in the Florida Straits was one not of man’s doing at all, but the natural con?guration of coral rock surrounding the islands.
“They’ve been slow about building lighthouses this far south; ships are still running aground on the reefs,” Martin told me once as we walked near the port.
“How terrible,” I murmured.
He looked at me incredulously and laughed. “Terrible? Hardly. That’s why we have such a thriving wrecking and salvaging industry here. We go out to help, and lay claim to the valuable goods aboard crippled ships. It’s what puts food on our tables.”
“But … isn’t that a form of piracy?” I asked.
He looked annoyed. “Have you understood nothing of what I’ve been telling you these past months? We don’t take anything we’re not entitled to. It all goes through the courts. We share the proceeds of the cargo sales, usually about twenty-?ve percent of the value of the goods. And believe me, with the risks we sometimes take, we deserve any spoils awarded to us!”
Although I was not about to challenge my husband’s word on the moral probity of wreckers, I was relieved at least that the United States, with its navy, was in charge of the island. At least that seemed like a positive thing at the time.
We had been in Key West for several weeks when I received a letter from Gran, my paternal grandmother, Hester Dinsmore of Harbour Island. It was delivered to me by Martin’s friend, Captain George Lee, just in from a Bahamian ?shing trip.
“A ?ne lady, your grandmother,” he said as he handed it to me. “Gave me tea. And told me she’s moving down here.”
“Gran is moving here?” I was sure he was joking. “To Key West?”
“Aye. She is that.”
“How did you come to meet my grandmother?”
“A business venture,” he said importantly. “Word came to me from a shipowner that a cultured lady in Harbour Island was looking for property in Key West. I went to see her about the piece of land my missus’s father owns on Caroline Street. She’s looking to buy it. That’s when she gave me this letter for you.”
How odd, I thought, for my father’s mother to move to our settlement. Of those few settlers who had come, many were English subjects who’d lived in pre-Revolutionary America. Loyal to King George, most of them had moved to British-controlled territories like Canada and the Bahamas after the American patriots drove the British out.
Gran’s parents had been among the British Loyalists living in Charleston before the war. Outspoken in their condemnation of America’s breakaway from England, they felt constrained to leave the country under George Washington’s ?edgling Continental government. Unwilling to face the weather in Canada, they had chosen the Bahamas, where they raised my grandmother. There she met my grandfather Dinsmore, a British o?cial in Harbour Island, and married him.
I remembered how sharp-tongued Gran could be. She had bitterly disapproved of my marriage, and had made her views known to me in no uncertain terms. But circumstances, it seemed, had chastened my grandmother’s feistiness. She now had friends leaving the Bahamas. Accustomed to a warm subtropical climate, some were heading to Key West. With their departure from places like Green Turtle Cay, Spanish Wells, Marsh Harbour, and Harbour Island, the fear of being alone had become a powerful incentive for her to follow.
“I’ve decided to move to Key West,” her letter read. “It seems like a good idea, with friends going over, and you living there and all.” She had added, “Perhaps you and I can get to know each other a little better now.”
Although this news did not please me initially, I was so lonely and homesick, any family member would at least be one more than I had now.
Gran lost no time. She arrived just a few weeks later. Martin and I helped her ?nd a small house on Front Street, which she rented while a shipwright she had known in the Bahamas built her a splendid residence on the Caroline Street property she bought from Captain Lee’s father-in-law.
Over the next few months, I did get to know my grandmother better. She introduced me to her elderly Bahamian friends, and because I was bored, I would join them for tea and card games. In those days, Martin was still very busy with his ?shing and wrecking jobs, and we continued to live at Mrs. Mallory’s.
My husband, I was to discover, was very good at working with his hands, a fact not lost on our landlady. “If you could help me ?x up the place, I’d give you your room for free,” she told him one day.
Martin considered this. “Very well … I’ll do it,” he said.
“That’d be wonderful,” she replied. Together, they worked out what repairs she required. In the following weeks, during the few hours I normally had spent with my husband when he was not off ?shing or salvaging, he was now off doing repairs.
Martin also had considerable imagination, always thinking about designing and building a house for us. At certain moments, his eyes would brighten and he would become very animated, sketching designs in the air for me.
“The cookhouse will go here … my workshop here … our bedchamber on this side … and the children’s bedchambers and playroom over there … the privies here …”
The site where we would build the home consumed him, and on the evenings he was home, he would take my arm and escort me on walks to show me land he had scouted. We spoke gently with each other during these times, and I was grateful to see glimpses once more of the attentive handsome man I had ?rst met on that terrace in New Orleans.
Our quest for the perfect plot was restricted to a very small neighborhood on the island. With the Gulf of Mexico on one side, and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, the island was only about two miles wide by four miles long. Most of it was uninhabitable, with swampy mangroves thick with mosquitoes. There were indented pockets in coral rock everywhere, with rotting ?sh, ?otsam, and sea grass trapped inside concave pools.
John Whitehead, the mayor of the settlement, hired his brother William to plot the streets in the higher, northern part of town, near the busy natural harbor on the Gulf. At that time, Eaton Street backed onto a forested area where, using slave labor, the mayor ran a prosperous lumbering operation to the south, near the ocean.
With access to freshwater from numerous cisterns, elegant new homes like my grandmother’s were being built, mostly along Front Street and on Whitehead. A business district was also taking shape there.
The heavily forested areas were of great concern for Key Westers, as hostilities with Seminole Indians were accelerating. The villagers felt vulnerable, fearing that the Indians would skim down from other Keys in their canoes, circle the island, slip inconspicuously onto the southern beaches, and plan attacks on the village.
A lagoon on the western part of the island meandered into the middle of the busy port downtown, becoming a dreadful insect-infested tidal pond. A footbridge over it extended to become the town’s main street, a partly bricked road known as Duval Street. At high tide and during storms, the pond regularly ?ooded the downtown area.
Because the settlement was eager to grow, some of the plots of land, usually just big enough for a tiny house, were actually being given away to lure new workers to the area. These were not acceptable to Martin, who was willing to wait and pay money for a larger plot, for he wanted a good-size home and a garden.
“I’ve found us the perfect spot,” he announced excitedly one day. “Pardon Greene is selling off a big plot just off Whitehead Street. It’s the extension of Front Street next to the navy base, overlooking the water. Fourteen acres!”
I could hardly fathom such space. “But that’s much too big for us!”
Martin looked delighted. “I have a plan—pineapples! A few years of good crops and we can easily earn our money back.”
I considered this. “How much is it?”
He hesitated. “Just one thousand dollars. An incredible bargain.”
“You jest! One thousand dollars? Why, that’s half what you said John Simonton paid for the whole island!” I was appalled, for although he involved me infrequently concerning our ?nances, I knew that we had not a fraction of that put by. “Even combining what remains of my dowry with your savings, we still cannot afford to purchase that land and build a home.”
This put him in a despondent mood. Finally, I said half-heartedly, “I could write to my grandfather.”
“By the time he’d get your letter and send us a check, it would be sold,” he said glumly.
“Then I’ll ask Gran if we can borrow it from her.”
Gran readily agreed. And though usually too proud even to consider such a loan, this time Martin agreed to accept her help. He bought the land and immediately ordered materials to begin construction.
I was of two minds about our new property. The idea of getting out of the boardinghouse and having a real home was appealing, but the plot was more land than we needed or could practically care for. And in truth, I was still hoping we might move back to New Orleans someday. Putting down roots meant I’d be stuck in Key West forever.
Over time, I conceded that my husband had been correct in his assessment of the harbor’s value. Shipping was becoming a big business in the port. Great numbers of vessels traveled weekly through the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits, especially from nearby Havana; Key West rapidly began to prosper. Heavy tra?c in the shipping lanes meant plenty of work for everyone in the settlement, servicing and supplying vessels. Martin was always busy ?shing, wrecking, or working at the boatyard.
He divided the rest of his time between Mrs. Mallory’s repairs and the cultivation of our own plot, on which he built a charming frame home—I was more than happy with the Greek Revival style he chose.
“Do you like this?” he asked me one day. “I’ll whitewash it and decorate it with gingerbread trim. And add wraparound verandas.”
He had it all decided already.
With all the unexpected challenges I faced early in my marriage, intimacy remained by far the biggest disappointment. Martin was always tired, usually happy just to ?op into bed and sleep. Sex seemed like just a necessity, and it was over with quickly. I had notions of improving the state of things after our shaky start, but these were soon squelched. Fatigue made Martin cranky. And since the only time he was truly happy now was when he was building, he was continually off working. At home, he was di?cult to live with, so we settled into a routine of devoting ?ve or ten minutes a week to this unsavory act, performed in lifted nightclothes.
One evening in January, Martin returned to the boardinghouse in unusually high spirits. “The house is done!” he announced.
“It’s ready?” I clasped my hands together with delight. “My own house!”
“You deserve it, dearest,” he said affectionately as he took both my hands in his. “You’ve been very patient with me, and with living at the boardinghouse all this time. I reckon we can start to move some of our things over there in just a few days. And we must start attending auctions to ?nd furnishings.”
I leaned into him and kissed him. “This will be a wonderful year for us.” In my mind, I was thinking about how I would decorate one of the rooms to accommodate a baby, for I had an announcement of my own. “I am in a family way, Martin.”
He drew away and held me at arm’s length, registering shock. Then he smiled broadly. “Are you serious? A baby?”
I nodded. “Yes, we must ready not one bedroom, but two.”
“Why … why, that’s indeed good news, Emily. Wonderful, in fact! Yes, this will be an exciting year.”
The prospect of a child was yet another tie that would bind us to the growing village of Key West, so he joyfully welcomed this news. I, on the other hand, as thrilled as I was with our new house, felt a certain ambivalence, for I saw every child I might bear as a weighty anchor that would keep me from ?eeing my island prison.
Although Martin’s pineapple crop grew vigorously, harvesting the fruit was excruciatingly hard work. When we married, my grandfather in New Orleans had offered me a slave named Caliban as part of my dowry. To my surprise, Martin wanted no part of having a Negro as part of our household—even as a slave—so we had declined the offer. Grandpère had shaken his head, and instead, he gifted us a set of encyclopedias, which were in their own way a help, providing information on the various cultivars of pineapples and how to care for them. But at harvesttime, when his prickly fruits required handling, Martin rued his decision to reject Caliban. We could not afford to buy slaves of our own, and in any case, very few were available for sale in Key West. Instead, we made do with renting them by the day from Key West slave owners.
Thus, we settled into a life in the new village of Key West. I was sure we would remain in our lovely home forever and that the only changes ahead of us would be the children to come and the future of growing old together.