The Gilded Years (6 page)

As the roommates were packing their dresses on Friday to travel to Boston early the next morning, Lottie
turned to Anita and said, “Anita, forgive me. I’ve been too excited about the football game to think correctly. We’re going to take a train that terminates in Boston. Shall we stop in to see your family? We don’t have much time, but if we are to visit my cousin Lilly in Cambridge, then of course we must call on your family.”

Holding her white day dress in her hand, Anita let her arms fall, and the dress fell with them. Lottie bent down and picked it up for her.

“No, we will not have enough time for a visit,” Anita said, turning away. “And I just said goodbye to them two weeks before. I would much rather spend the day in Cambridge with your cousin.”

“Are you certain? I don’t mind a slight detour.”

“We can make the trip up another time. I’m sure there will be many more reasons to visit Harvard as the year progresses.”

“I certainly hope so. They hold two formal dances a year,” said Lottie. “And attending a football game in the fall guarantees an invitation.”

“Then I can’t decline, can I?”

“Most certainly not!”

The girls agreed that when they arrived Saturday, they would take a carriage straight to the inn and rest, dine in Cambridge, and spend the morning on Sunday with Lilly after an early church service. Lottie and Anita were not the only girls from Vassar making the journey up for the first Harvard football game of the fall, but they decided not to group with any of the other Vassar students, wanting no distractions during their first trip together.

“You’ll simply fall in love with Lilly,” said Lottie, as their train glided from Albany to Boston. They had spent an hour on the platform waiting to change trains and head east and
were just starting to recover from the heat. Inside the car, the bulbous lamps embedded in ornate metalwork were not helping. “She’s a real beauty, Lilly is. Everyone was always going on about it when we were children, and you can imagine how that made me feel. I won’t pretend I wasn’t elated when she didn’t pass the Vassar entrance exam. She was one year ahead of me at the Brearley School. She had her share of admirers at that time, but I’m happy to report that her grades were not near the top of her class. But don’t take that to mean that I was jealous of her. She’s really a lovely girl. You’ll see. I’m so very fond of her.”

“Lottie,” Anita said, watching her friend’s gloved hands fidget with everything in reach. “You’re a very pretty girl, too. Sometimes I think you’re simply unaware of it. And you’re an awfully entertaining person, which I think is more important.”

“Aren’t you lucky, rooming with a comedienne?” Lottie said happily. She looked out the window at New York turning into Massachusetts and said, “Anita, I am well aware that I have a flair for the dramatic, but one thing I know about is people. I can see which girls cause men to turn their heads and which do not. You, Lilly—you’re the kind of women men fall for. I’m a good-enough-looking girl, but I’m no great beauty.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” said Anita, surprised by her roommate’s harsh judgment of herself. Anita guessed she was quoting an overcritical mother.

“Let’s not analyze it too closely,” said Lottie. She leaned back on the green velvet seat and ran her hands down the carved wooden armrests. “Let’s just remember that we are young and intelligent and not so bad to look at. This weekend will be memorable, so let’s bask in it. It’s our last year, and I’m already feeling painfully sentimental. It’s my nature.”

Anita smiled at her, sharing that part of her nature.

“If your cousin did not pass the Vassar entrance exam, did she attend another college?” asked Anita a moment later, watching a porter bring lunch to the travelers ahead of them.

“Did I not tell you?” said Lottie, flagging him down and ordering them rare steak and potato soufflé. “She’s at Radcliffe now. Class of 1899. She prepared for the exam up north so she’s behind me now. And the girls don’t live on campus at Radcliffe, so I’m in the habit of saying Cambridge. But we are to visit her on campus tomorrow.”

“She’s a student there? Presently?” Anita repeated, her voice rising with every word. “We are going to visit her at Radcliffe?”

“Of course!” said Lottie, laughing at Anita’s disquiet. “Is that all right?”

It was anything but. Anita knew only one girl at Radcliffe College—Gertrude Baker, class of 1900, a dark-skinned Negro from Cambridge. She had known her for many years, and if they encountered each other on campus, it was highly likely that she would acknowledge Anita like an old friend.

Anita knew that traveling to Harvard with Lottie had its risks, with Frederick at school in nearby Boston and the rest of her family in the city, too, but she would never have accepted the invitation if Lottie had uttered the word
Radcliffe
.

“Yes!” Anita said, trying to lighten her tone. “That sounds wonderful. A day on the Radcliffe campus. I just wasn’t aware. That seems like a very pleasant way to spend the morning.”

Anita turned her face away from Lottie and rested her head against the thick glass of the train window. How could she have been so impetuous, saying yes to Lottie’s invitation
without considering whom she might see? Running into Gertrude could be her ruin.

Anita thought of her years at the Prince Grammar School in Boston, then at the Girls’ High School. At both she was enrolled as a Negro student. She was at the top of her class, and she was a Negro. At Dwight Moody’s Northfield Seminary, the boarding school she attended to prepare for Vassar, she had passed as white. Her roommate there was Elizabeth Baker—or Bessie, as she was known—her closest friend and Gertrude’s older sister.

Bessie, too, was a light-skinned Negro, a quadroon, and she could have passed as white, like Anita, but she chose not to. On Anita’s application to the school, she had asked to room with Bessie, and because Mr. Moody’s academy was different from most, and because her request solved the school’s problem of where to house Bessie, the girls were placed together without question.

Bessie was now attending Wellesley College as a Negro student, where the color line had been broken in 1883, but Anita had no communication with her during the school year. They did not exchange letters because Anita was terrified to have Bessie’s name appear anywhere on her correspondence. The Vassar students had too many friends at Wellesley, and everyone there knew the name Bessie Baker. Anita was able to see her occasionally during the summers and other holidays at home, but only when she was with the Negro community, never as a white Vassar girl.

But Gertrude did not resemble Bessie. She was much darker.

When the train pulled slowly into Cambridge, expelling steam as it braked, Anita’s nervousness stayed with her. She didn’t know what it would feel like to be close to Boston in the company of someone so removed from her
own domestic life, and the fear of crossing paths with Gertrude only heightened her uneasiness. She had decided that if she saw her on campus, she would have to turn and flee, praying that Gertrude, who knew of her situation at Vassar, would understand and not follow her.

They headed to their hotel, the Magnolia Inn, and Lottie spent the hour they were at tea telling Anita whom she should bother speaking to at Harvard the next day and who was a waste of breath.

“The men from the Middle West are the kindest, which of course bores me, but that might sit well with you. You have to leave me all of the men from New York. It’s states’ rights,” she said. Anita promised she would ignore the Empire State, and they changed and headed to dinner in town.

“Thank goodness for hansoms,” said Lottie as the hotel doorman helped them into the carriage. “The restaurant’s not far, quite close to the campus, but it is still too hot to walk, I’m sure you agree.”

There were hansoms all over Boston, just as there were in Cambridge and New York City, but when Anita returned home, she was never allowed to hail one. They charged seventy-five cents an hour, far too much. But Lottie had been opening her little purse since they left Poughkeepsie, insisting that because the trip was her idea, it would cost Anita nothing. “Father is practically forcing us up here,” she said as Anita tried to purchase them refreshments at the Albany train station. “Save your money for school.” Lottie might not have known how little money Anita had, but she was used to the fact that she was always the richest person in the room, unless a Vanderbilt was about.

As they finished their dinner of lemon-glazed chicken with morels and Lottie settled the bill, a fashionably dressed woman approached their table with her husband, looking
unsure at first, but then rushing toward them as Lottie glanced up.

“Is that Lottie Taylor?” the woman asked. She had the arm of a slight, elegant man in a white vest and dinner jacket, though he moved considerably more slowly than she did.

“Nettie!” exclaimed Lottie, standing up. “Nettie DeWitt. But of course, you live in Cambridge now, don’t you?” They exchanged greetings, Nettie pushing back her high-crowned velvet hat, and Lottie introduced her friend. “Miss Anita Hemmings,” she said as Anita rose. “My roommate at Vassar this year, and the reigning class beauty.”

“That’s apparent,” said Nettie, taking Anita’s hand. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m a Vassar girl myself, but before you both arrived on campus. I’m a proud member of the class of ’92. Such an old girl now.”

“Nonsense,” said Lottie, interrupting her. “You only missed us by a year, and you still look like a freshman, with a good seamstress.”

Nettie waved away the compliment, her thick, sable hair bobbing as she moved. “You were always a delight, weren’t you?” She turned to Anita and said, “Lottie and I grew up around the corner from each other in New York. I remember her when she was a three-foot terror. I’m still terribly bitter that she was able to stay in the city and attend Brearley while I was shipped off like a parcel with legs to Emma Willard in Troy.”

She turned her wide eyes back to Anita and asked, “Where did you prepare for Vassar, Anita?”

“I’m from Boston, and I stayed in the state. I went to Dwight Moody’s Northfield Seminary. It’s very far north, on the Vermont border.”

“Dwight Moody’s? That’s an awfully liberal place, I hear,” said Nettie. Had even one other girl from her time
at Vassar prepared at Northfield? “Students from far-off reaches of the globe, of all creeds and colors.”

“It was quite modern in that sense, but deeply religious,” Anita replied, hoping to protect her beloved school. “Everyone certainly left a committed Christian.”

“Of course, of course. You ladies and your religious educations.”

“Nettie! You sound like a heathen,” said Lottie, laughing.

“Blame my husband,” she said. “He may be a Harvard English professor but lately he’s also become a naturalist or a nationalist, or something like that. Isn’t that right, dear?” she said, turning to nudge the silent man behind her.

“My husband, Talbot Aldrich. I’m Nettie Aldrich now. I’ve abandoned the Dutch.”

“A pleasure to meet you both,” said Talbot. His passive face suggested that he was quite used to standing behind his wife.

“Will you be attending the Harvard game tomorrow?” Lottie asked Talbot. “My brother John is in his third year at Harvard. We’re here on Papa’s orders to make sure he isn’t failing out or ruining lives. Last summer he threatened to elope with one of the maids. You can guess how that was taken.”

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” said Nettie, laughing with Lottie. “Are you, or we, attending the game, Talbot?” she asked her husband.

“Afraid not, my dear. The last time we took in a game, you complained from the first moment about the weather and we left after twenty minutes.”

“That’s right,” said Nettie. “I just remembered that I detest football. Barbaric sport. But have a grand time, you two, and please call on me the next time you’re in Cambridge. We’ll be here for simply ever as Talbot is such a to-do at
Harvard now. Running his whole department. Number 7, Brattle Street. Nettie Aldrich. Don’t forget the Aldrich or you’ll never find me!” She waved goodbye, showing off the Belgian lace pulled tightly over her hand.

“But you must have heard stories about Nettie,” said Lottie, as the girls left the building in another hansom. “She was a terror at Vassar. She somehow skated by and graduated—she is awfully bright—but she’s a monster.”

“Monster? How exactly?” Anita asked, already learning to be skeptical of Lottie’s colorful language.

“She loves a prank. Really, she once found herself stranded on top of Main with her dress caught on the bell. And in the rain. She’s legendary.”

“I have a feeling they’ll say the same thing about you one day,” Anita said.

“We shall see,” said Lottie, closing her eyes. “The worst fate I can think of is not to be talked about.”

That, Anita was sure, would never be a problem for Lottie Taylor.

T
he next morning found them leaving their hotel by carriage for Radcliffe. Lottie had cabled her cousin to say they would arrive at nine, after attending the 7:30
A.M
. church service in town.

“Have you visited Radcliffe before?” asked Lottie as the carriage wound its way to the small campus.

“On one occasion,” said Anita, trying to calm her palpitating heart. “When I was home from Northfield. But it was just a brief visit. And in vain as I already intended to take the entrance exam for Vassar.”

“Me, too. I was sure, even as a child, that there would be nowhere more splendid than Vassar.”

As a child
, thought Anita. It was when she knew, too.

When she was ten years old, and already a very promising grade school student, Anita had overheard a white woman at her Episcopalian church telling the Reverend Phillips Brooks that her daughter was graduating from Vassar College in the spring. Other Trinity Church parishioners had overheard her and had gathered around to hear the story, as a woman pursuing higher education in 1882 was extremely rare. Vassar had been founded only twenty-one years earlier but already the women who had
converged spoke about it as if this woman’s daughter had obtained a golden ticket to heaven. She called Vassar the most exclusive and the best school for women in America, and everyone around her agreed. So that was the way Anita first viewed a Vassar education, as something that could make well-to-do white women beam with pride and envy.