Noon at Tiffany's (64 page)

The ravages of age seemed not to have touched her, though, on closer inspection, Clara saw signs of worry etched around her magnificent dark eyes. “I think the last time I saw you was just after your marriage to Dr. Burlingham. How are you?”

Giving the street a last quick glance, Dorothy pulled her to one of the viewing benches in the middle of the room, talking as she went. “The children and I are doing well. Bob, my eldest, is driving down to pick me up. He’s late and I—” She laughed at Clara’s shocked expression. “I know, I’m sometimes just as surprised when I think that one of my children is old enough to drive.”

“One
of your children? How many are there?”

“Four. The youngest is twelve. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

Clara shook her head in wonder. “It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were sitting in the Lenox Hill attic sipping hot cocoa. Where are you living now? I read that your sisters and their families are still at Lenox Hill. I assumed you …”

Dorothy’s features hardened, and for a moment, she looked exactly like her father. “I had no intention of following my sisters’ dutiful examples. My father’s generosity in having my siblings live there was no more than his desire to remain in control of everyone. As a woman of an independent nature, I expect you, above all, can understand my decision.”

Clara smiled faintly, “I do, although I doubt your father will ever comprehend, let alone believe the wisdom of your choice. He was raised in different times with different rules. Still and all, it makes me happy to think that the women of your generation have the freedom to rebel these days. In my time we were bound and gagged; it took a long while for us to fight our way out of the prisons men built for us.

“So if you aren’t at Lenox Hill, where are you?”

“The children and I have been living in Vienna, with Dr. Sigmund Freud and his daughter, Anna. I’m studying psychoanalysis. I only came back to New York to see my father, since I doubt very much I’ll see him again.” She paused. “He’s not at all well, Clara.”

The news hit her almost as a physical blow. “Your father is ill?”

Dorothy gave her a long searching look then gently squeezed her hand. “He’s eighty-four, Clara and very frail. His eyesight and hearing have failed, and at times his mind wanders so that I’m not sure he even knows who we are.”

Frail? She couldn’t even begin to imagine Mr. Tiffany in any other way than full of life and bluster. Frailty wasn’t any part of the man she’d once known.

A good-looking young man came up behind them and touched Dorothy’s shoulder. “Mother? Are you ready to go? I have the car parked outside.”

Dorothy rose and kissed her son on the cheek before making introductions. She took a card from her handbag and wrote an address on the back. “I’m sorry Clara, but I must run. My family and I are sailing back to Europe this evening. This is my address in Austria. Please write. I promise I’ll reply.”

From the gallery door, Clara watched after them as they got into the Bentley and drove away. For a moment she felt older and sadder than she’d ever felt in her life, as if she understood for the first time how fleeting life was, and how little time was left.
When her thoughts tangled, threatening to drag her down into desolation, she sought out the one gift that never failed her—the beauty of art that surrounded her.

January 18, 1933

Salem, Mass.

Dearest Clara,

I don’t know if you will have already heard the news by the time you receive this, but Louis Tiffany died yesterday after a bout of pneumonia. He went peacefully, surrounded by family, and, of course, Patsy.

I visited him briefly at Christmas and was saddened at how much he’d deteriorated in both mind and body. Nonetheless, there were moments when he perked up, and, at one point—without prompting from me, said: ‘I’ve missed my dear Clara. I wish I could see her once more.’

I wasn’t sure I should share this with you, considering I promised not to rile that sleeping dog, but now that Louis is gone, I hope you’ll make allowances. Perhaps it might even bring you some bit of comfort to know he was still thinking of you at the end.

I look forward to seeing you and Edward in April. Perhaps we can all meet at Emily’s cabin this summer and have a reunion-retreat with whoever else is left from the old 44 Irving Place family. I will write to Emily and begin paving the way for our possible convergence. I’m sure if we encourage her to serenade us on the zither, she’ll have no objections.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings, but I was sure you’d want to know.

Love, Henry

May 27, 1933

Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

It was a good day. Clara awoke full of energy—the usual aches and pains that gnawed at her joints, held at bay.

Passing through the cemetery gates, she followed the attendant’s
directions until she found what she was looking for. With great care, she gathered the flowers from the backseat and made her way up Vale Path.

She spotted him partway up the hill, just below his parents’ grave, noting at once the striking contrast between the father’s traditional limestone marker and the son’s modernistic, prism-shaped stone.

In a nearby tree, a crow watched her with apparent interest, while she took her time breaking off the blades of grass that had grown too tall across the front of Louis’s marker. When she was satisfied, she propped the spray of wisteria and peonies to one side of his name and stood back to admire her work.

Still, she could not quite bring herself to believe that he was no longer alive. Twice in the four months since his death, he’d appeared in her dreams dressed in his white pongee suit and Panama hat.

Glancing around to make sure no one was near, she addressed his engraved name. “I’m not sure of what to say, Mr. Tiffany, except that you and I certainly had a roller coaster time of it.”

Above, the crow let out a long series of caws that sounded much like laughter.

“You were a clever businessman with a great eye for beauty—I only wish you’d been a better man.”

Clara pulled a faded velvet ring box from her pocket and undid the clasp. Under the bright sun, the emerald and diamond ring flamed to life. She stared at it for a long while, then kissed it and pushed it deep into the damp earth of Louis Tiffany’s grave.

Brushing the dirt from her hands, she patted the smooth granite top of his headstone. “I forgive you, Mr. Tiffany. Now it’s time for rest.”

January 1, 1945

Canandaigua, New York

My dearest Edward,

Thank you for bringing Clara back to Tallmadge so that she might be buried next to her sisters and mother. When I received Clara’s death certificate, the reality of her permanent absence asserted itself with a vengeance. While I understand what a terrible shock it was for you in the misery of the moment, I do take umbrage with your classifying her occupation as ‘housewife’ on her death certificate. She was never any such thing. If they will let you, change it to her rightful title of ‘Artist.’

I went searching for memories and dusted off all the boxes and binders of round robins, starting back in 1853 with Grandmother. I have just come to the letters from 1911, when Clara’s company first began making money. Do you remember how gratified she was at finally being
known
?

I have to stop here for now, as my eyes are not behaving and I am very tired.

With all my love, Emily

In my efforts to reconstruct the past, I not only relied heavily on the Wolcott women’s round robin letters and Emily’s, Clara’s, and Edward Booth’s letters written in the 1920s and 1930s, but also on countless online sites, where I uncovered many obscure and detailed facts about the times, places and people in this book.

My source materials included census records, death and birth certificates, hospital records, social registers, New York State court records, police records, the
New York Times
archives, passport records, real estate records, archived maps, various Sears Roebuck and Co. catalogues from the 1890s and early 1900s, uncountable antiquarian books, and oral histories from Wolcott relatives. I also toured those of Clara’s residences still in existence, the site of the old Tiffany studios, and most of Clara’s favorite haunts in New York City, New Jersey, and the Hudson Valley.

I frequently referred to
The Last Tiffany; A Biography of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham
(Atheneum, 1989), by Tiffany’s great-grandson, Michael John Burlingham. I also used much information from Elizabeth A. Yeargin’s summary,
The Pierce and Wolcott Letters
(1993). Yeargin (1919-2000), was the first to read and organize the entire collection of Wolcott letters. She donated the collection to Kent State University in 1993.

I consulted hundreds of standard histories and source books for the period and characters used in this book, but my use of the following was greatest:

Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society,
by Richard A. Wells
(King, Richardson & Co., 1893)

The Lost Treasures of Louis Comfort Tiffany
by Hugh McKean (Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1980),

King’s Handbook of New York City
by Moses King (1882)

Behind the Scenes of Tiffany Glassmaking; The Nash Notebooks
by Leslie H. Nash, compiled by Martin Eidelberg and Nancy McClelland (St. Martin’s Press, 2001)

We All Went to Paris; Americans in the City of Light
by Stephen Longstreet (Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1972)

A New Light on Tiffany; Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls,
compiled by Eidelberg, Hofer, and Gray (New York Historical Society, 2007)

Louis Comfort Tiffany
by Jacob Baal-Teshuva (Taschen, 2007)

Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass
by Robert Koch (Crown Publishers, 1988)

In many instances in this book, the dialogue between Clara and her mother, Fannie, comes directly from their letters. However, while Emily and Kate’s characters have been formed by the impressions their letters and diary entries made on me, there are no known letters from Josephine. Thus, my character portrayal of Josie was created from the information and inferences gathered from her family’s comments and memories of her.

As an added point of interest, the original Lenox Hill Tiffany Mansion (built 1882) on Madison Avenue and East 72
^nd
Street was demolished in 1936 and replaced with an apartment building. Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company at 333-35 Fourth Ave (now Park Ave South) at Twenty-Fifth Street still stands, the ground floor occupied by various merchants. The Corona Glass Factory in Queens, where Alice worked and Clara visited once a week, stands today at the corner of 44
^th
Avenue and 97
^th
Place. The Briars in Laurel Hollow, Long Island, was later owned by Tiffany’s daughter, Mary (May-May) Tiffany Lusk. It was torn down in the mid 1930s. Laurelton Hall, Tiffany’s architectural masterpiece at Cold Spring Harbor, built at a cost of $2 million, was auctioned off for $10,000 in the 1940s, and was destroyed by fire on March 7, 1957. Miss Owens Boardinghouse at 44 Irving Place was demolished and is now the site of Washington Irving High School. The San Remo Hotel, at 145-146 Central Park West, where Francis Driscoll died in 1892, is still in existence.

Thank you one and all to the following people and organizations who helped make this book a reality:

National Public Radio (NPR) for airing WKSU reporter Vivian Goodman’s January 2007 story about Clara and the Tiffany Girls. Without that broadcast, I would never have met Clara.

Frank Langben, whose research skills greatly helped to make this book as historically accurate as possible. His longstanding support and friendship at every step and turn has been invaluable.

The family of Clara Wolcott Driscoll Booth, especially: Linda Alexander, who has been in my corner from the beginning, supplying me with family information and history. She also generously granted me permission to use the recently discovered photograph of Clara used on the cover of this book. And to Dave Powers of Seattle—the courageous soul who initially challenged the Tiffany experts and brought the Wolcott letters to the public’s attention so that Clara might finally have the recognition she has so long deserved.

More distant cousins: Carolyn Atwood Mackey, who directed me to the Wolcott family during my first few days in Tallmadge, Ohio. Dick Pratt and Andy Youngblood who both helped secure and restore the cover photo of Clara.

Robert and Nancy Treichler who were kind enough to give me a complete tour of their home—the Tallmadge ‘House on the Hill’ where Clara was born and raised and where Fannie Wolcott Cutler lived and died.

Craig Simpson, formerly of Kent State University Special Collections and Archives Library, who guided me in my research of the extensive Wolcott letter collection, and also Amanda Remster Faehnel of KSU Special Collections and Archives Library, for cheerfully and tirelessly photocopying letters, making my many weeks and long hours there easier.
And, to the Brimfield Historical Society, Kelso House Collection, housed at the Kent State University Library Department of Special Collections for kindly giving permissions to use material from their Wolcott-Pierce letter collection.

The Queens Historical Society and executive director Marisa Berman for allowing me access to their portion of the Wolcott letter collection, and for their permissions to use that material in this book.

Liz Fronenberger, who believed wholeheartedly in Clara from the first moment she met her, and for her help with the initial round of editing. Dear friends Ben and Lee Colodzin for providing me with loving support and the means to finish this book. David Weber of Anna Maria Island for his friendship and business expertise.

Editor Ellen Steiber, for helping with the initial structure of this novel. Rosemary Ahern, for her insightful editing, her patience with my many questions, and for her encouragement. Olivia Blumer of Blumer Literary Agency, Inc. for her encouragement. Rachael Garrity of PenWorthy LLC, not only for her copyediting and book design expertise, but for her support and her belief in this book.