Authors: Marge Piercy
“You have perhaps a problem that brings you to me? Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Freydeh began to talk about her sister when Madame interrupted her. “I remember you. Yes, I’m sure of it. Didn’t you used to come to me to buy pills and potions for a pharmacy? You didn’t speak much English but you always had a note from the pharmacist and you did the sums quickly in your head. I remember that.”
“Yeah, that was me, Madame.”
“Do you still work for that pharmacy?”
“No, I work on my own. I make male protectors—condoms. Four different kinds, I make now. Good quality and cheap.”
Madame laughed. “That’s a good line for a woman. You’ll make money. Keep at it, and you may be doing as well as I am someday.” She propped her hands on the desk. “Do you have a sample of your work?”
Freydeh dug in her carryall and pulled out a packet.
Madame Restell carefully unwrapped a condom and tested it on her
hand. She examined the workmanship carefully. “You do an excellent job. Good for you. And why are you carrying them with you?”
Freydeh laughed. “Not for use by me. If I see a rubber goods store or a pharmacy, I stop and show them my wares to see if I can make a sale.”
“Good business practice. You have a head for it.”
“I want to make enough for a little house and my sister to live with me—and my nephew Sammy, who’s waiting outside.”
“You have no children?”
“My husband died five years ago. I’m a widow. And when he was killed, I lost my baby.”
“I have one daughter.”
“Is that her I met? She has a resemblance to you.”
“You’ve learned to speak well since we last met. Good for you. When I arrived here, I had an English country accent—hardly anyone could understand me. So I learned to speak the way the New Yorkers do, and now nobody knows I wasn’t born here… No, that’s my granddaughter. I do think there’s a resemblance, more than with my own daughter. She lives with me—she and my grandson, Charlie. They are precious to me. Caroline helps me with the practice.”
“You’re lucky, Madame.”
“Well, I can afford them. Thousands of women who come to me can’t feed another mouth. But you know, what you do and what I do are against the law now.”
“Madame, you must have protection? You advertise. You don’t live under a rock.”
“Far from it!” Madame Restell laughed. She had a full melodious laugh that shook her shoulders and made her eyes gleam. “I shock them down to their bootheels. When I drive in the park in my carriage, the fine ladies look away. They come to me heavily veiled, but they come. And they pay dearly. But their husbands come to me socially—the judges, the police commissioner, the politicians, the lawyers, they come to my at-homes, they come to my parties. You and I, Mrs. Levin, we have our use to society. They pretend otherwise, but they need us as much as they need their policemen and their cooks and butlers. They scorn us, but they can’t live without us. The society would be overrun with shame, with unwanted children, with bastards, with even more homeless children wandering the streets starving. Women would be thrown out into the street by their parents, by their husbands. We save them in our different ways, but we both save their lives and their honor and their futures.”
“Back in the little village where I grew up, midwives did what you do, and the men never knew of it. It was our business, the women, when to have children, when not to have children.”
Madame nodded. “It used to be that way. But young women come to the city now and they don’t know how to protect themselves. They get into trouble and they don’t know what to do. The world has changed, Mrs. Levin, maybe not for the better.”
“The world here’s so different. I can’t make my older sister understand this isn’t some little place where I can find my missing sister.”
“So that’s what you came to me for. You believe she was with child and needed to get rid of her troubles.”
“I don’t know if she came to you, but I got to find her.” She told Restell the whole story. Restell did not hurry her along but listened carefully. Then she examined the drawing Freydeh always carried.
“I recognize her. She called herself Samantha. Let me check my records.” She rang a bell under her desk and the young woman appeared. “Caroline, find me the records of a Samantha I think it was Leibowitz?”
Freydeh nodded.
Caroline bobbed a little curtsy and disappeared behind a massive door. She was gone for some minutes.
“You keep records of every woman you help?”
“I do. Carefully hidden. No one searching this house would find them. But I view them as a kind of insurance. Not the names and records of women like your sister. She had little money, as I recall. I charge poor women twenty dollars and rich women a hundred or more. Nowadays, up here, I get mostly the hundred-dollar trade. But I still help women who most need it. I was not born to money, you understand. I earned it the hard way. I was born in poverty and worked as a domestic servant. I’m not ashamed of that any more than I feel shame for how I made my money.”
“We all get by how we can, Madame.”
Caroline at last returned with some papers. Madame took them from her and through a pince-nez read them. “Your sister was four and a half months along. I could not help her. I begged her not to try to lose the baby—it was too late. She wept but I think she understood me.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“She gave me an address. Caroline, would you write it down for Mrs. Levin?”
The young woman wrote carefully in an ornate hand and then gave
her the piece of paper. She smiled shyly as she handed it over. She did look like a younger, slighter version of Restell.
“Madame, thank you. I hope I find my sister. And maybe a new child.”
“She should have delivered this month or very soon. She’s a pretty young woman, but her hair is lighter than in your drawing.”
“It didn’t used to be.”
Madame smiled. “Many things are not what they used to be, Mrs. Levin. Be well and I hope you find your sister. You’re a rarely sensible woman. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”
Caroline rose and showed Freydeh out. They picked up Sammy on the way, rousing him, for he had fallen asleep in the overstuffed plush chair near the metal object that gave off so much heat. “What makes this house so warm?” Freydeh asked Madame’s granddaughter.
“We have a furnace.”
“A furnace?”
“Central heating.…I remember when we had only a Franklin stove.” Caroline smiled at her. “Madame must think a great deal of you to give you such an interview. She is all business with most of the women who come. She doesn’t have many women friends these days.”
“She is kind. We understand each other.”
“Well, good luck to you. Should you need her again, I imagine my grandmother would be glad to see you.”
“Thank you, sweet one.” Freydeh touched her cheek. “You’re as pretty as my Shaineh, my little sister. It’s her I’m looking for.”
T
HROUGHOUT LATE SUMMER
and early fall of 1869, Victoria and Tennessee continued to see the Commodore regularly. Except for the fact that he was married and his new wife wanted them to move uptown where other rich people lived, only the frequency with which they saw Vanderbilt changed. He now dined with his new wife some evenings, but he
also dined with the two of them often enough. He continued his liaison with Tennie, who acquiesced for the possible advantages.
“I doubt I would have been comfortable as Mrs. Vanderbilt. The old boy is something mad about bossing his people around. And I’d like a younger husband, frankly, if I have to have one. One I wouldn’t have to spend half an hour getting hard.” They were working on hats. Women wore extravagant big hats with dead birds, plumes, whole gardens of artificial flowers bedecking them. The basic hats they had bought cheap downtown from a pushcart, but the decorations were up to them, as neither was about to spend a lot of money at a milliner’s. Upstairs, Roxanne was praying in loud singsong to protect her dear children from the dreadful snares of this wicked city and return them all safely to Ohio. In the next room, Buck was playing whist with two men Utica had brought by while Zulu watched. She was an observant little girl, a trait Victoria encouraged.
“It’s all water under the bridge now. We need him. Something big is happening with the gold market and I’m trying to pump Josie about exactly what it is.”
“Fisk is behind it? The old boy has a bee up his rump about Fisk and Gould.” Tennie put on the hat she had finished, sashaying into the next room to twirl in front of the men. They applauded and Zulu followed her back in.
“Gould is playing some complicated game with gold. Trying to get the facts out of Josie without appearing to pump her is taking forever. Fisk just bought her a brownstone on Twenty-third Street, right near Castle Erie—the Pike Opera House where Gould and Fisk have offices. If Josie used her brains, she’d be rich in her own right.” She patted Zulu on the cheek. “Be smart, my darling, whatever else you become.”
“Well, Vickie, you have brains enough for the two of us.”
“You’re not stupid. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you are. You’re just a little careless and overly loquacious at times. It’s part of your charm.”
“What is lo…loquashus?” Zulu asked.
Victoria explained. She had endless patience with her daughter. “Where’s Byron?”
“He’s sleeping on the couch.” Zulu pointed to the next room.
“Thank you, precious.” Victoria ruffled her hair, dark as her own now. “You should always keep on eye on him, because unlike you and me, he can’t take care of himself. He’s helpless as a newborn kitten.”
“Not really,” Zulu said, looking her mother in the eye. “He’s strong. He grabbed my arm and left a bruise.”
“Let me see. Oh, precious, he didn’t mean to hurt you. But I’ll try to teach him to be more careful. Sometimes, you know, he does understand. He wants to please.”
“I know, Mommy. Don’t worry.” Zulu came and laid her head in Victoria’s lap, next to the feathers she was attaching to a swoopy black hat.
Victoria stroked her hair. From the next room came loud voices arguing about a play. Buck was cursing and there was a clatter as he knocked his chair to the floor. Victoria sighed. They were bored. She must think of something for them to do before her family caused trouble.
“Papa,” she said when things had calmed down. “It would be ever so helpful if you’d go down to Wall Street and listen to the sidewalk brokers. Hear what they’re talking about. Sometimes you pick up good information. Would you mind doing that?”
“I’ll get on my finery.” Buck liked acting the part of investor. Sometimes she gave him a twenty to play with. The streets around the Exchange were crowded with the lesser fish of Wall Street, the fly-by-night brokers, the men who had gambled and lost and wanted to gamble again, the little operators who had no office or even a desk to call their own. Sometimes Buck came back with useful rumors, who was buying, who was selling what, who was said to be trying to corner something. Victoria believed she could never have too much information. Josie was a better source, when she paid attention, but Buck was more reliable in transmitting what he heard. She had bought him a fine frock coat, shirts and boots in which he looked respectable; by now, many sidewalk brokers recognized him. They thought him one of them or a possible investor. Victoria had begun quietly playing the market through the Commodore. Sometimes she followed his advice, but occasionally she took a flier on her own. She had a fortune to make. Vanderbilt already had his.
Jubilee Jim Fisk and the little ferret Gould were planning something, Vanderbilt knew it, she knew it, and half Wall Street knew it. Buck came home to supper with rumors that Gould was trying to corner gold. Gold was central to finance in every country that operated in the capital markets, a currency recognized worldwide. Merchants doing business abroad had to pay in gold, for paper money was no good in Europe or in the far-flung European empires. Once the United States had been on the gold standard, but the Civil War had thrown that out. The government was minting twenty-dollar gold coins, but it had proclaimed that all debts could be paid in paper money, of which it issued four hundred million. Paper money was generally regarded as worth only about two-thirds of
gold specie. There was a regular trade in gold and greenbacks carried out in the Gold Room just off Wall Street. It was big business, often conducted on the slimmest of margins. Gould said a man with a hundred thousand in cash could do business for twenty million in gold if his credit was good. She had been listening to Vanderbilt for the last year and a half, gently grilling him about the market and investments until she felt she had begun to grasp finance.
She reported what she had learned to the Commodore Thursday at Delmonico’s, where he had brought the sisters for an unfashionably early supper. “I keep hearing that Gould is buying gold, trying to corner it. How can he do that?”
The Commodore chuckled. “I’m betting he can’t.”
“Why does he think he can? Fisk is in on it too.”
“Let’s say I sell some locomotives in Birmingham, England. The sale is in gold, but I don’t get it right away. They can’t telegraph me gold. So if the price of gold drops while I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for the payment to arrive, I’m screwed. So I cover my ass by selling short in gold. If the price of gold drops, I’ll make my profit on the short selling—buying gold I don’t have on speculation that people will be dumping it. If the price of gold rises, I’ll be beaten on my short, but I’ll be covered by the increased worth of the payment coming my way. See? Either way, the merchant makes his profit.”
Victoria picked at her lamb. She was far more interested in the conversation than in the food. Tennie was eating roast beef with zest, paying little heed to the conversation, but careful to beam and make eyes at the Commodore while she dined at his expense. “How do Gould and Fisk fit into this picture?”
“They plan to buy up all the gold they can, and then when the merchants who have plenty of money short the gold, they can squeeze the be-jesus out of them. They hope to fleece them like so many little lambs.”
“So will you join them in the attempt to corner gold?”
“The government has a hundred million in gold in the vaults in this city. If Grant wants to, he can throw a spanner in their engine and it will blow up in their faces. It’s sticky and tricky. I plan to keep an eye on those dogs, but I won’t jump in until I see how the wind blows.”
She was not satisfied with Vanderbilt’s take on the situation. She decided to lay out her knowledge before Annie Wood. Together they would figure out what they needed to know. If Fisk and Gould were going to make
a killing, so was she. According to the Commodore, not a lot of capital was needed to make money if the scheme worked. That was perfect for her.
Annie listened carefully, drinking more of her dark coffee than she normally did and pouring it liberally for Victoria. Sun streamed into the conservatory where they sat by the statue of Daphne. It was September, no hint of fall in the air but the heat and the humidity of full summer lay like a sodden carpet on the city. A servant girl fanned them as they sat mulling over what Victoria had pieced together.
“One of my clients, a judge in the Tammany machine, let something drop about Gould buying himself a bank along with Fisk and a bunch of the Tweed cronies. Tenth National Bank. It’s a small bank as banks go, but they must have a reason for wanting it. Gould always has deep reasons. He never buys for the sake of acquisition.”
Victoria felt as if she were on castors, going back and forth, back and forth between her sources of information and the Commodore, who snapped to attention. “A bank? I didn’t notice that. It’s a small unimportant bank, but this is interesting. The little weasel is smarter than I thought.”
“In what way?”
“Okay, he wants to corner gold. Now a bank can issue certified checks. Everybody treats them as good as cash. So he has an unlimited supply of fake cash, don’t you see? It’s a variation on the old Erie Railroad swindle where he did me in by printing stock as fast as his damned presses could slosh it out. He’s going to do the same with certified checks for buying gold.”
“The man is brilliant, you must admit.”
“He’s a scoundrel and he can crash the market single-handed—or two-handed, him and Jubilee Jim with the five-carat stickpin flashing. They’re crooks. But they’re able crooks, I’ll give them that.”
Victoria understood that the Commodore considered this game of Gould and Fisk a dirty one, but to her that could not matter, as this looked to be her only chance. She made a great fuss over Josie, who was always hungry for flattery, and she and Annie bided their time, trying to understand the game. Victoria took all the money she had to buy gold. Everyone knew that she was a favorite of the Commodore, and she was extended credit beyond reason. The gold traders and brokers either thought she was a front for Vanderbilt or suspected he was backing her. As a married woman, she had to carry out her transactions in Colonel Blood’s name. He
was caught up by her gold fever and borrowed from his brother in New Jersey. It was a dangerous strategy Usually such opportunities and such information were kept from women, or spilled only to frivolous women like Josie who could not comprehend what was at stake.
In a rare sign of confidence, Buck gave her his winnings at whist, poker and faro to invest. Every day she woke more on edge. Josie remarked that the president was in the bag because Gould and Fisk were thick with Grant’s brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, a speculator and lawyer to whom Grant was grateful because he had married his middle-aged spinster sister. Corbin was living just off Madison Square, quite near Erie Castle, and Gould and Fisk dropped in on him daily. The president and Mrs. Grant had been guests of the Corbins several times since the marriage, at which it was said Grant had told Corbin, Ask me for anything! Now apparently he was getting his wish, for Corbin was up to his neck in gold-buying, along with Gould and Fisk. They had to be sure that Grant would not release a flood of gold from the government’s vaults and thus drive the price of gold back down. Every day it edged upward. Grant had let Fisk give him passage on his steamship
The Narragansett,
putting the president and his wife up in the sumptuous bridal suite. Everyone in New York thought Gould and Fisk had the president in their pocket, for he had sat in Fisk’s box at the Opera House and Fisk and Gould had called on him while he was visiting the Corbins.
The Commodore was not so sure. He thought Grant was suspicious of Gould, although he didn’t seem to mind Fisk. “But what could a real general make of Jubilee Jim in his fake admiral’s uniform? He’d judge him a blustery faking fool, Vickie. We’ll see, we’ll see.”
Still, when the spirits through Victoria advised Vanderbilt that it was time to buy gold, he bought. Victoria was more nervous than ever, but if she was right, she could not leave the Commodore out. If she made money, so must he, or he would not forgive her. If they lost, her own money and her source of patronage would vanish at once.
Victoria felt as if she were wearing a path between Annie’s and the Commodore’s. She also began to call on Josie in the brownstone Fisk had bought her. She came with flowers or bonbons or little china dogs for Josie. Josie had a live yappy little Pomeranian and miniature dogs on every table and in a special glass curio cabinet. Josie was not the most stimulating company, but Victoria could not do without her inside track. Josie was flattered by Victoria’s attentions. She had admired Victoria since San Francisco. She was lonely in the house with its satin chaise lounges, its huge
dreadful oil paintings of naked nymphs as fleshy as Josie alternating with sentimental portraits of children in gossamer finery, its stuffed birds and doggy bric-a-brac on every surface, bronze satyrs, vases and Moorish footstools and peacock feathers in still more vases, mirror-backed shelves covered with china dogs of every size and breed. With half this money, Victoria knew she could create a luxurious but livable domicile.
First she had to make that money, and to succeed in her enormous flier in gold, she had to keep abreast of exactly what was happening with Gould and Fisk. She had briefly considered trying to get close to one or the other, but she could not encroach on Josie’s territory—she was scrupulous with her women friends, always, even ones as silly as Josie. Gould, she had learned, was a family man with no vices besides his total lack of morals in the marketplace. He rushed home to his wife and daughters without fail. He had never taken a mistress or even flirted with another woman to anyone’s knowledge.
The price of gold had sunk as the harvest came in, and she bought whatever she could. But she had nothing to back up most of what she had bought on the slimmest of margins, and if the plan fell apart, she could do nothing but flee. She would have to collect her family and abscond in the night, as they had so many times after the failure of one bad scheme or another. This was her one big opportunity; where could she go if she failed in New York? Europe?