by J. F. Collen
The entire family, seated in the ballroom, paid rapt attention to a large sheet suspended over three of the floor-to-ceiling windows. A man standing behind the group worked a large lantern, pulling tins, cut with shapes, in and out. Actors danced and sang around the images projected on the sheet as a tall man boomed a story in a theatrical voice.
“Was ist das?” asked Nellie, as she sank into the first chair in the back of the group, wondering what she was seeing.
“Ach du Liebe, that is your father and his boyish enthusiasm for all things technologically novel,” whispered her mother, sitting in the chair next to Nellie and handing her baby Elizabeth. “Our evening entertainment is a traveling Magic Lantern show. Your father used his connections to persuade the Magic Lantern Troupe to provide us a preview. And now they must be our overnight guests, as travel tonight remains impossible. The Olive Opera House will host this entertainment tomorrow night, if, of course, the storm has passed. As your father is on the board of directors of a charity raising money for a new Sing Sing hospital, we thought it only fitting we host the dress rehearsal of the Magic Lantern fundraiser performance.”
“Since this beautiful baby prevented me from going to one Crystal Palace charity benefit, it seems only fitting I should be in a winter wonderland palace, privy to a preview of the entertainment for another.” Nellie smiled.
“After the performance, you must ask your father for an explanation of the technique,” whispered Mrs. Entwhistle. “It shall please him to no end. For weeks our dinner conversation has been focused on limelight, hand painted glass slides, and magical smoke effects in anticipation of this event. In fact, I am quite surprised that you have not already been regaled with the technical details of this ‘magic’!” Mrs. Entwhistle laughed softly.
“Come to mention it, I have heard Papa discourse at length about this magical combination of technology and showmanship,” Cornelia said, raising her whisper to normal conversation volume as her whole family burst into song along with the performers. She smiled. The sound of music filled her already happy heart with joy to the bursting point.
The performance engrossed the attention of Nellie’s entire family so thoroughly, not even Emma or Obadiah had noticed her entrance into the room. They all sat watching the images projected on the sheets, paying rapt attention to the stories and laughing at the jokes.
Content to be a fringe participant in the comedy mixed with drama and song, Nellie quietly arranged her garments to let the newborn nurse and relaxed back into the chair, watching the antics of the light show through mostly closed eyes. Mrs. Entwhistle squeezed her hand. Nellie returned the squeeze, hoping her mother knew how much Nellie loved and appreciated her. Nellie smiled her gratitude. The Lord is good; I am truly blessed.
PART TWO
Chapter 16 – Cornelia Street
Sing Sing, New York, August 1856
Nellie hummed and sang as she presided over the stove, listening to Emma ‘read’ to her baby sister. I must sew Emma another book. She has quite mastered this one.... ‘Twill not be much longer before baby Betsy learns to play with her big sister.
Nellie clapped at Emma’s dramatic conclusion to her reading. Opening the lid of her kettle, and adjusting the heat, Nellie crooned, “All around the cobbler’s bench, the monkey chased the weasel.” She turned around at a commotion: Emma ran around the baby’s chair as Elizabeth squealed in delight. I must capture our family’s joy and wonder at this precise moment in time. I read the brilliant photographer, Mr. Matthew Brady, just opened his second portrait shop in The City, using the newest technology in photography to capture images. This modern invention is so far advanced from the painted picture, I have a mind to hire his services. I wonder if Papa could help me arrange a session as a special surprise for Obadiah? Our family, as we truly appear, commemorated forever, not in an old-fashioned painting, full of artistic interpretation, but in a tin daguerreotype or, far superior, a paper photographic portrait. Our two precious jewels, sweet Emma and that little character Betsy shall be captured for all eternity!
Nellie glanced out the window over her kitchen water pump and basin, observing and absorbing the streets of her childhood she loved so well. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight, she thought, savoring in the spectacular hues of red and pink streaming through the clouds hovering over the Hudson Highlands across the river. Tomorrow shall be the perfect morning for a stroll through the woods at Croton Point. Betsy can practice her walking on the sandy beach and Emma can collect oyster shells from the big mounds left by the Sinct Sinct tribe. Mayhap we can start our visit to Lyndhurst Mansion for tea early by joining Mutter and Anastasia in their carriage for the drive. Mutter shall delight at the prospect of holding Elizabeth the entire journey. Emma will be tickled pink as well; I never did think such a fledgling would so adore the company of ladies at tea.
“Cornelia, a thousand kisses if you can deduce the contents I bear in this appendage.” Obadiah snuck up on her while she was feeding the children, wrapped one hand around her waist, and kissed her on top of her head. She tucked her vagrant hair into place and turned into his arms with a smile.
“Papa,” shouted both girls in chorus. All the Wright women looked at him with big loving eyes.
“My ladies, now that I command your attention....” Obadiah stepped back, revealed a parcel in his hand, and strode grinning toward the potbellied stove. “I have an announcement to make: I purchased a wonderful new book, hot off the presses, which shall help us prepare for our journey.”
“Journey? Whither do we fare?” Cornelia Rose was astounded.
Obadiah stuck out his right leg. Assuming a pose, he tucked his left hand into his lapel and looked off into the distance dreamily.
“Mercy, what is it, Papa? Do not tease so,” begged Emma.
“Da da da?” Elizabeth seemed to ask too.
“Go West, young man, go West,” announced Obadiah.
The young ladies looked at each other in confusion. Even Nellie found no clues in his dramatic proclamation helpful for solving the riddle.
“‘Go West, young man and grow up with the country?’ Does not this oft quoted utterance ring a bell?” Obadiah burst out laughing at Nellie’s puzzled look. “Have I stupefied thee into silence? It is an incitement to action from our finest of editors in the most accurate of newspapers, ‘Old Honesty’ himself. We embark upon a journey West, my ladies, as our editor and good neighbor, Horace Greeley has urged.”
Nellie blinked back tears as Emma ran giggling into her father’s arms.
“Where is my ‘Huzzah’?” teased Obadiah gently, looking at her from the joyous hugging of two squirming girls.
“I am rather taken aback! Speechless, in fact,” Nellie looked at her husband with startled eyes.
“Never in all my experience have I ever known that to be the case,” Obadiah teased gently.
Nellie shook her head. “Go West? How far? To what end? For how long?”
“I propose we go West and make our fortune,” Obadiah said with shining eyes.
“Forsake our home, our neighborhood, our community? Ride off into the prairie?”
“The prairie is the Northwest. That territory has long been settled.”
“Go farther than Agnes in Chicago? Abandon our current, opulent lives—to live in the woods or on the plains? After all the wonders we witnessed at the great Exposition, inventions that will soon make our lives here even more comfortable and enjoyable? Do you imagine there will be streets to stroll, gas lighting, or even a theater on the frontier? Leave our thriving hometown, with ships that bring us any commodity we need from the four corners of the earth and take us to the greatest commercial metropolis of the nation in one short hour, for parts totally unknown?”
“Come, come, what care we of the great metropolises? We love the open land where our independence, cunning, and fortitude shall allow us to seek our fortune!”
Nellie’s head spun. “We have an interest in our fortune vested right here. We’ve built a cozy
home, surrounded and aided by good, God-fearing neighbors. Yet open land aplenty abounds—just look across the river at the majestic mountains. The bounty you cast aside so cavalierly must be delineated: Sing Sing affords us beautiful villas and auspicious, venerable estates, a sophisticated village of thriving shops with any merchandise or service we could desire at our command. Do you not relish the prosperity of this town, with its shipbuilders, manufacturers, venerable boarding schools, and academies?”
“I see you neglect to mention this prosperity’s attendant noise, pollution, and debris. I have oft heard your complaint—when the wind blows from the north you cannot abide the stench from the neighbor’s privy and livestock,” Obadiah reminded her. “Not to mention your dismay at the continuous belch of putrid smoke streaming from the locomotives and factories, polluting the river.”
“Abandon our home, and your promising future in your legal career?” Nellie whispered.
“I kept the choicest portion of my announcement until the end. The motivation for our quest is a significant promotion, in the form of an opportunity, that has been bestowed upon me.”
Nellie looked at him. Her interest now aroused, in spite of her stomach churning horror at the thought of leaving her home, she said, “Pray tell, hold me in suspense no longer!”
“Right smart. Your instinctive and insatiable inquisitiveness has returned,” teased Obadiah.
“Dear husband, your news has dealt quite a jolt to our comfortable scene of domestic tranquility. You have shaken me to my very core. Do not toy further with my mental state,” said Cornelia, without a trace of her usual good humor.
“As you wish, Madam Wright,” Obadiah said with a flourish and a bow. “Justice Urmay has been instrumental in aiding my procurement of a position as a circuit judge in Utah Territory.”
“Utah?” Nellie gasped.
She plopped down on the stool by the stove, as if the wind had been taken from her sails.
“Shucks, where is that bold adventuring lady whom I wed such a short time ago? The wench who said ‘whither thou goest, so goest I’?” He smiled and took her in his arms.
Normally, being dubbed a wench would perturb Nellie, but she was too upset to even notice. “Forsake my family, our comfortable life, the streets where we live, our beautiful surroundings? Shall you truly demand this of me? Pull up stakes never to return?” Nellie asked with tears in her eyes.
“You are already in the correct mindset—using slang from the claim digs at the gold mining camps.” Obadiah laughed, but Nellie just stared at him. He closed his mouth and returned the stare.
Nellie looked around at her cozy kitchen: the dinner simmering happily on the gleaming black potbellied stove, water pump primed and poised over the basin for a quick dispatch of cooking utensils and dinner dishes, gas light glowing through beautiful sconces, and fire crackling merrily, spreading warmth throughout the room. This is the very life I have chosen, and I have created, for us. How can I abandon it?
Suddenly, she had an even more horrible thought, and looked up at Obadiah with fear on her face. “Are we to travel the same trail as the Donner-Reed party?” quivered Nellie.
Obadiah held out his arms. She hesitated at first. Must I subsume my desires to his? Must I choose between losing my life or forsaking my husband’s happiness? She teetered on the brink of indecision.
...To love, cherish and obey, until death do us part, according to God’s ordinance.... She remembered her marriage vows. She hesitated, looking at the floor, listening to her adorable babies’ chatter. Obey? Do I not have a voice?
She heaved a deep sigh and surrendered into Obadiah’s arms.
Chapter 17 – I Would Do Anything for Love
Sing Sing, New York, September 1856
“I too, am reluctant to witness your departure. But wives must be submissive unto their husbands,” her father said with a stern expression on his face. “Your husband has all of t’ markings of a fine attorney at law. Would you deny him his dream, for selfish sentimental reasons?”
Selfish? Sentimental?
“This ‘dream’ of his upends our entire lives. Wrenches us from civilization on a whim!” Nellie cried. “What of my dreams—for my children to know their heritage, and their grandparents? For a life utilizing the comforts of industrialization, rather than a life of deprivation?”
“This assignment is a mere five years’ duration. After sowing his oats, yer husband’ll likely desire a return to civilization. Surely by that time we should have a navigable channel clear across t’ country, and yer Mutter and I’ll come out to meet ye and bring ye back ourselves.”
Nellie frowned, opening her mouth like she would argue that fact. Certainly, state governments are digging canals all over this land, connecting the Atlantic to many of the great waterways. But all the way across this huge continent? Could that be anything more than a dream, or at most, a remote possibility?
“Even if not a waterway....” Mr. Entwhistle paused and looked around as if he did not want anyone to overhear this confession, “...that dread locomotive will soon be connecting t’ country, sea to sea.” Nellie gaped at him in surprise. Does Papa think rail travel will outdistance water navigation? James Entwhistle ran his hand over the top of his head and down to the base of his neck, looking sad. “The only good o’ that fact is today’s yearlong journey over land, or months long dangerous ocean voyage to the Isthmus of Panama, canoe ride across a river, trek across land, and sail up the west coast, will soon take less than a few weeks via rail or inland canal. Moreover, ‘tis not a pie in t’ sky hope nor a bunch o’ Blarney, there’s speculation our government has plans in t’ works, engineering a canal through Panama.”
He shook his head. “By the staff of Saint Patrick, there are mighty travel improvements heading down t’ ‘pike. Come here to me, there’s my good wee colleen,” he concluded. He wrapped her so tightly in his arms Nellie knew he was not so quite accepting of her husband’s decision as he represented.
Cornelia’s mother, at least, expressed more sympathy. “Ach du Liebe, my heart broke when Agnes uprooted and journeyed to Chicago. Howsoever, I took a modicum of consolation in the realization that Illinois and the Northwest Territory is now within our United States. But Utah Territory, the hotbed of heathens? Ach, so far away. Mein Kind, my child, all we can do is pray that this bold adventure is short-lived.” Gertrude Entwhistle reached out her hand and patted Nellie’s stray hair back into her bun.
“Now,” Gertrude said briskly, pulling back and re-tying her apron. “We must prepare for our Sunday family picnic. Constantly changing circumstances in life make us all too painfully cognizant of the brevity of time we are allotted to enjoy our abundant blessings.”
Nellie scurried around, sorting through her possessions, painfully parting with many things she realized would not serve them on their journey. Ever the scholar, she read every guidebook and newspaper article about the Oregon and California trails. Ever the romantic, she read novels and accounts of the fate of emigrants who traveled before her.
She and Obadiah spent many a night, after her darling daughters were in bed, planning and making lists until the candles burned out and even the gaslight seemed to flicker.
On the previous Saturday, Obadiah, Zetus, and Jerome returned from New Hampshire with two new horses pulling a wagon made of New Hampshire pine so raw it gleamed.
“Cornelia Rose, may I present....” Obadiah stepped aside with a boyish grin and a grand flourish, “...your new Conestoga wagon! ‘Tis renowned as the finest wagon made anywhere in the world,” Obadiah boasted.
“Originally made only in the Conestoga River Region in Pennsylvania, the best Conestogas are now made in New Hampshire, from New Hampshire pine,” said Jerome. “This beauty will hold up to six tons of cargo. There shall be room for little else, but it might just be the right vehicle for all your books, little sister!” He smiled, a broad impish grin that scampered from his face at the site of Cornelia’s stormy countenance.
Zetus ran
his hand over the gleaming pine. “With this sturdy girl, you’ll have enough space for your Julius Dessoir settee!” he said, and turned toward Nellie with a smile. “...By the sword, Nellie, forgive my vagary. I meant no harm.” Zetus dropped his hand to his side and hung his head. “‘Tis a ‘bang up to the elephant’ wagon.”
Nellie knew the menfolk and Obadiah were right—it was the finest, most sturdy conveyance. She had read all the literature too. “Mercy, there is not enough room for even my chest of drawers, much less our potbellied stove,” she said, wiping away a tear. Jerome and Zetus vanished with a hastily mumbled, “Adieu.”
“Mr. Wright, I wonder at your choice of a Conestoga wagon,” Nellie said, hesitant to cross her husband, but incensed that such an important decision was made without consulting her. “The guidebooks I have perused counsel an ordinary farm wagon qualifies for the task better than a Conestoga. A farm wagon’s spaciousness and lighter weight makes it far easier for a horse team to pull.”
“Why do you presume I have not taken this information under advisement before making my decision?” Obadiah scowled at her. “I knew you would express hostility toward my purchase.”
“Your accusation is unjust. I merely believe we could have saved the entire sum of this purchase by simply using a wagon already in our possession. A farm wagon, already equipped with a bench in the front, affords us a convenient perch for our daughters. I despise the thought of our tiny tots walking all the way to Utah Territory.”
“‘Tis a simple matter to add a bench in the front, complete with a buckboard,” said Obadiah, through stiff lips.
“A simple matter? Will it not change the very structure of the Conestoga?” asked Nellie.
“I chose this wagon so you might have maximum capacity for all your prized worldly goods you are loathe to part with.
“Doggone it, Cornelia Rose! If I could but wipe that contentious countenance off your face.” Obadiah slapped his hand hard on the tongue of the wagon. The sound reverberated so loudly Emma ran over from her swing to make sure no one was harmed. “Recall your vows—’wither you go, there goest I’!”