The Harlot’s Pen (3 page)

* * * *

December 28, 1919

We did have a lovely Christmas. Sam gave me a pearl necklace and matching earrings. I gave him a gold tie-stick. We dined with the Dohrmanns, Andrew and Charlotte. I could not call him A.B.C. as he would have preferred, A. B. C. Dohrmann being how he went professionally, but I thought it a woeful affectation and strange in such a businesslike personage. Andrew was charming. His five sons were even more charming, although his brother, Fred, who had been the vile naysayer on the Wage Commission, was a dour thing. It was no wonder Andrew had the total running of Nathan-Dohrmann.

I tried to avoid all talk of politics, although Andrew did mention that he knew I was an advocate for the minimum wage. Fred, speaking like an old sock, stated firmly that too many women were working for the pleasure of it, for “pin money” as he called it. Andrew agreed with his brother that women were taking jobs from the men who were back from the war. I mentioned that it was not likely that someone would stand on her feet for eight hours a day at his store, having to be pleasant to irritable and haughty shoppers, for ten dollars a week for fun. Sam gave me a look that froze my Christmas turkey, so I stopped talking. I felt such a coward.

Luckily Mrs. Dohrmann, Charlotte, rather, was a perfect hostess, although I could not imagine how she could even still be breathing with seven children—the two tiny daughters were beautifully turned out in dresses that made the little girls look like sugarplum fairies. Her cook was excellent. I was certain that the cook was paid more than ten dollars a week, but I restrained myself from pointing out that it was unlikely that she was working for pin money.

There was quite a bit of talk about the Dohrmann Commercial Company expanding to Buenos Aires, which is in Argentina, and Sam became quite animated in that conversation. At home he hadn’t talked about going, though, since Thanksgiving. I was still unsure of his plans.

By Christmas, with still no word from
Argus
, I guessed I should forget about it.

* * * *

January 5, 1920

We rang in the New Year and the new decade with all of the high hopes we had for the future. The war to end all wars had now been over for more than a year. Men were back, and unlike in Europe, we still had most of our men, so there were fellows everywhere. They had become so much more sophisticated than they had been when they left, most of them, since before the war most had never been out of California, much less been to Paris.

We went to a party at the Fairmont, and everyone dressed grandly. Sam bought me the most beautiful silk dress, discounted certainly at a N-D owned store, but still, the height of the new fashion, three inches above my ankle. It was of a shimmering rose-gray color, with a long waist that made me look even taller than I already was. My height, which was of course a detriment in most situations, was well-shown in the new style. Luckily for me, Sam was almost six feet high, and even in my outrageously high heeled shoes I didn’t tower over him.

The music was new Jazz, the kind that sent one’s blood zinging through the veins. I danced all the new dances, and when Sam didn’t want to dance with me, I danced with all the other fabulous men who were at the party. Leticia did not run with the same crowd—her Albert was a staid, starched fellow, but she liked him fine—but Jacqueline and Francis Pemberton were there, and Jacqueline and I spent half our time sizing up the clothing of the ladies, and the other half dancing with all the gents.

The New Year was always a time for reflection on what had gone before and what we could hope to come. Between dances, seated at a little table littered with empty champagne glasses, Jacqueline and I dissected the outfits of everyone present, remarking on who had embraced the new, shorter fashions and who adhered to the old high-necked, ruffle-sleeved look of the previous decade. Though the war years had simplified fashion, if anyone had dared leave her house dressed as Jacqueline and I were on New Year’s Eve—with far more leg than just an ankle showing, and no waistline at all—she would have been arrested for indecency.

The highlight, from a social climbing point of view, was meeting Senator Hiram Johnson, the former governor. He was a founder of the Progressive Party and had run for president. He was brilliantly handsome, and we had a spirited talk about politics. He agreed that we were on the cusp, now, of a time when a woman could be accomplished in arenas previously reserved for men: painting, music, writing… “You would of course never attract the same money as men, but think of the achievements.”

I predicted a luminous future for that fine man.

It was a great night. What made it even greater was when we got home, Sam was too drunk and tired to bother me much, and the New Year rang itself in peacefully for once.

On New Year’s day, Mr. Dohrmann’s driver took us out in the automobile, and we went down to Redwood to wish my mother a Happy New Year. She had moved us, widow and fatherless girl, out of San Francisco a few months after my father had died. I had little sympathy for her then, furious at being hidden away in a backwater, and I had escaped to Berkeley and college as soon as I was able. In retrospect, when I had been abandoned at the altar, waiting for a man and a period that did not come, I saw merit in hiding my face. But she had remained in Redwood, bitter and alone. I had moved on.

Poor woman, she could barely get in and out of her rocker anymore and was pretty hard of hearing. But age seemed to have softened her, since she received me and Sam somewhat graciously, given the harshness of prior years.

“A woman with a past should be scrupulous in her behavior if she wants to reenter society,” she had said when I first introduced Sam. I had tried to forgive the rudeness, knowing that elders couldn’t move as swiftly with the times. If a man and a girl wanted to live together, I had explained, marriage was no longer necessary. Sam had said he didn’t believe in marriage, that it was a bourgeois construct, although he didn’t seem to mind the luxury we now lived in. Sam and the Progressive movement had embraced me, given me a home where I belonged. I was lucky he would have me.

Three days into the new year, I opened the newspaper to shocking news. The Department of Justice had raided meetings and work places all across the nation, including in California, and had arrested three thousand people, all accused of “plotting together to rise up and destroy the fabric of the United States government by violent means,” as a certain Mr. Palmer, the head of the Justice Department, was quoted as saying in the
San Francisco Examiner
. Anyone who was at a meeting, or near a meeting, was arrested. This was the same Department that had seized Mrs. Whitney. In response to complaints at the Congressional hearing immediately following, that the officers had no warrant, the Department of Justice stated, “This is no time to split hairs when our country’s very foundations are at stake.” Mr. Palmer was quoted as saying that membership in the Communist Labor Party was warrant enough. Not everyone in our nation’s capital agreed.

It was against that frightening backdrop that Leticia and I worried over Mrs. Whitney’s upcoming pre-trial hearing. We hoped they would dismiss the charges against her, but given the arrests of so many, it was hard to feel optimism. We made plans to meet at Leticia’s home to await word, along with other progressives, while men from the Progressive Party staffed the telegraph so we could all know the results as quickly as possible. I was deeply grateful that I hadn’t been caught up in that net back in November.

* * * *

January 7, 1920

They didn’t free her. The judge set her trial for January 28 and continued to hold her without bail. The reports said she was a shadow of her former self, and although she stood proud and adamant, she was thin as a rail and coughed throughout the hearing. Those of us receiving the news in Leticia’s quiet salon vowed a mass attendance at the trial to give her hope.

Unlike Leticia, whose Albert was stolidly in support of her views, and Jacqueline, who did exactly as she pleased, I was faced with the question of how to attend without Sam’s knowing. The irony of living in an untraditional relationship with a former community leader of the Progressives and fearing his wrath if I attended the trial of the greatest Communist leader of our time was not lost on me.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. We were approaching the third anniversary of our time together. We had lived together through a long war, an exciting peace, and now, an angry domestic stalemate.

* * * *

January 15, 1920

The fourteenth was the anniversary of the day we met. I could still see him, tall, commanding, his green eyes glimmering as he stood before the group of Progressives at the Bateau Ivre café. I had ventured out with Leticia, who had been my friend in the two years I had attended college in Berkeley before becoming catastrophically engaged. Most assumed it was the war that prevented my marriage. It was only she, and later Jacqueline, who knew the truth.

The horrors of the war in Europe were far away from us that night, and we were all fired up about the new unions. Sam had given such a stirring speech I stood up and applauded. I had looked around, and mortified, realized that I was the only one. Fortunately, it was a kind laughter that engulfed me. Sam sat down at my table and bought himself a whiskey. A few months later, he took me home, and in effect I never left.

But that was all in the past, before I got involved in Miss Bary’s Commission, and before Sam went to work for A.B.C. Dohrmann.

I chilled a bottle of champagne for us to drink together. Sam didn’t get home until it was almost ten. The bottle remained in its bucket.

* * * *

January 29, 1920

“Toil she must, to crumb the empty larder,

to still the cries of her hungry child,

while her master scoffs at her plea so mild

to pay her sex fairly—she begs so meek

to keep her body off the street.”

The Rape of the Working Woman,
V. Strone

What joy it was to quote myself at the beginning of this entry!

To my amazement, a check from the
Argus
arrived in mail: ten dollars! The irony was not lost on me. I didn’t have to stand on my feet for hours for a whole week to earn that, nor lie on my back while strangers took their liberties.

There was no letter, just a note: “Payment for
The Rape of the Working Woman
to be run week of Feb. 20-28.” The check was payable to V. Strone. Fortunately, the bank knew my “maiden name,” and would consider it a misspelling of Stone. It was the first money I had earned from my writing in three years, and I felt the thrill of publication almost as strong as the heady relief of knowing I could still earn a room’s worth of rent.

Competing with my accomplishment was the tension among my friends as the date for Mrs. Whitney’s trial approached. We had taken on the mantle of supporters and spoke obsessively of the possible outcomes, almost as a sports fanatic weighed the potential of his team in the World Series of Baseball. At home, Sam was gone so much at work that I stopped doubting I would be able to escape to attend the trial. When he was home, he had begun talking about Argentina again, but I saw no forward action. Perhaps it was his dream of escape.

Jacqueline, Leticia, and I took the ferry across the bay once again, this time in the frigid gloom of January. Francis Pemberton, Jacqueline’s husband, a lawyer himself, accompanied us, and explained the process as it transpired. I was grateful for the information, but it ultimately had the effect of eliminating any hope I had for Mrs. Whitney’s acquittal.

At last, the trial for Mrs. Whitney started. The whole first day they picked a jury, and the men and women on the jury look like very severe, dutiful people. It took the entire day to satisfy the lawyers. Tom O’Connor was representing Mrs. Whitney. He’s a “damn good lawyer” according to Jacqueline’s Francis, who knew him from school, but to me he didn’t seem to have his heart in it. Then the lawyers made their opening arguments, or no, I was corrected, their opening statements, and Mrs. Whitney’s supporters were stunned. Mr. O’Connor basically admitted that Mrs. Whitney was a member of the Communist Labor Party. His entire defense would be based on the idea that the CLP was not connected with the two illegal groups, Communist International and Industrial Workers of the World. We were skeptical of the wisdom of this defense, but Francis explained that the choices were limited. We vowed to attend every day, even with the ferry ride across the bay, if we could.

* * * *

January 30, 1920

Mr. O’Connor asked for a delay of the trial, explaining that his daughter was ill with influenza. The moment those words were out of his mouth, there was almost a stampede for the door. We had been lucky out in California, but the news across the nation had been horrific. People, hordes of them, were dying from influenza, and nothing could save them. Their lungs filled up, and they gasped to death within one or two days.

It was obvious that Judge Quinn had it in for Mrs. Whitney. He refused to delay the trial. Mr. O’Connor was ashen and left the courtroom. The judge told Mr. Thompson, Mr. O’Connor’s young partner, to take over, and the trial went on.

It was already dark when we left the courthouse. The cold had settled into the bricks of the buildings, and a fine drizzle fell, chilling us to the core. Francis kindly went to hail a cab for us to save us the long walk in the freezing rain. As we waited, I saw women in the shadows, shivering in their thin dresses, hoping for customers on this miserable night. I watched as one reached out a hand to Francis as he passed, but I could not hear her solicitation, nor his response. There was a woman who would likely not eat tonight, and her refuge from the elements would be meager, at best.

* * * *

February 10, 1920