Inventing Victoria

by Tonya Bolden

  Utterly at ease, before long Victoria was laughing, chitchatting, exchanging pleasantries.

  And fanning herself in the packed parlor.

  Am I coming down with something? She excused herself. “I simply must get some air.” She headed for the sitting room across the hall to get her cloak, then for the front door. When she opened it—

  “Well, hello there.”

  Victoria almost jumped out of her skin. Speechless, she just stared at him.

  Gray-striped pants. Black Prince Albert frock coat. Silver-gray jacquard waistcoat. His white shirt had a high-stand wing-tip collar. His white cravat was tied in a cascade. On his feet, patent leather Congress gaiters. His silk top hat was in his hand.

  He looked magnificent.

  She noticed the sharpness of his mustache and hairline. He must have been in a barber’s chair that morning.

  “Hello,” Victoria finally said. A whisper.

  “I heard that you had accepted.”

  “Indeed.” She looked past his shoulder, trying to get unflustered.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “No. I just need a bit of air.”

  He offered his arm.

  “Hadn’t you better go inside and pay your respects to our hosts?”

  “That can wait.”

  He offered his arm again.

  Victoria took it. Head held high, she walked with Wyatt down the steps.

  “Hello, Victoria! Hello, Wyatt!” shouted new arrivals full of Christmas cheer.

  They both waved, neither speaking until they reached the end of the long walkway.

  “You look lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Fine.”

  “I was told that you went to Baltimore.”

  What difference did it make if she let him know of another lie. “That’s what was said, as I wanted to avoid society. I have been here all the time.”

  A strange look came over Wyatt’s face. She decided to nip things in the bud. “Yes, Wyatt, it was a lie, another lie.”

  “No, no, I did not mean—I understand why you, why you …”

  She had never seen him at a loss for words.

  “I have not been much in society either. I have been putting all my energy into the business—reading actuary books and thinking about potential clients, mostly.”

  Victoria looked at the wreaths at the windows of the Fitzhugh home, at the window boxes overflowing with pine cuttings cradling gold ornaments. She wondered if there would be snow. Inside they were singing Christmas carols.

  Finally Victoria looked in his direction. “Wyatt?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would like to know, so that I can prepare myself, so that Dorcas Vashon can prepare herself too …” She looked him in the eye. “While I know I can have no expectations of you, as a last courtesy I would like to know when you told your family that we broke off the engagement, what reason did you give?”

  Wyatt fidgeted with his top hat. “None.”

  “What do you mean, none?”

  “I have not said anything to anyone.”

  “Well, when you do tell them, what will you say?”

  Wyatt put his top hat on his head. “Do me a favor, Victoria, go back inside and tell the Fitzhughs that you are feeling unwell. Then I can walk you home and we can talk.”

  “Feeling unwell? Lie? You want me to lie, Wyatt? You?”

  “Touché.” His smile didn’t mask the sadness in his eyes.

  Victoria looked away. To steady herself she thought about how heartless he had been.

  Your dirty little secret.

  Have you no shame?

  She willed herself a heart of stone. She would not be moved.

  “Wyatt, I can understand that you were shocked. But you were so cruel.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. So sorry!”

  “And that question you started to ask.”

  “What question?”

  “About when I was living in my mother’s house. You wanted to know if I had ever been a—”

  “What are you talking about? I was not about to ask that.”

  “Then what were you trying to ask me?”

  “If … when you lived in your mother’s house if any of the men ever tried to, well, interfere with you. It was starting to sink in how mean your childhood was, how vulnerable you were.”

  Victoria was stunned.

  Wyatt took her hands in his. “I am truly, truly sorry, Victoria. I was beastly. I was caught off guard when I am so used to being on top of things. I … was wrong. I can imagine what a burden it is to live with such a secret. What I want more than anything else is to shoulder some of that burden.”

  From his waistcoat pocket Wyatt brought out the emerald-and-diamond ring. “I have been carrying it around with me since that day, hoping to run into you, working up the courage to pay you a visit, then when I heard you had gone to Baltimore, I—”

  Victoria stared at him unblinking. “You what, Wyatt?”

  “I hoped that when you came back …”

  WISHES HAVING WINGS

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today …”

  As Reverend James A. Handy spoke, eighteen-year-old Victoria chose to go back.

  Not to Factors Row.

  Not to that house on Minis Street.

  Not to the uncles.

  She went back to Wyatt’s tearful pleadings for forgiveness.

  Back to how crushed he looked when she said she needed time to think.

  Back to cut flowers he sent.

  Back to making him wait.

  Back to wanting to be sure.

  Back to their splendid dinner at Wormley’s.

  “… in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate …”

  Back to dizzying days of choosing cakes and canapés.

  “… or forever hold their peace.”

  Back to the evening Dorcas Vashon informed her that she would soon be on her way, taking Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers with her, and then gave her five hundred dollars for her Mothers’ Helpers club.

  Back to tears and the coded way that they would keep in touch.

  Back to Dorcas Vashon telling her that it was now fine to write Ma Clara.

  “I am confident that the two of you will be discreet, wise,” she said, then revealed that through Miss Abby, Clara Wiggins knew the mission that she was on.

  “She asked me to give you a helping hand.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yes, before you asked me to meet with her.”

  “But when?”

  “One day when you and Binah went marketing.”

  Back to processing just how much she owed Ma Clara.

  Back to dashing off that first letter.

  Back to beholding Madame Keckley’s sketch of her champagne wedding dress: “Open high wing-tip collar … close-fitting bodice … twelve satin buttons … one side of the dress will sweep up into a bunting drape … an underskirt of bead-flecked lace … entire outfit adorned with intricately beaded champagne appliqués … copious layers of ruffled satin and beaded lace form the edge of a four-foot train.”

  Back to, moments ago, the butterflies in her stomach as the pitch-perfect organ pealed forth into Mendelssohn’s magisterial march composed for a scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “I now pronounce you …”

  Back to wishes having wings.

  Victoria went forward too. To a future with a family of her own, praying doubly hard for at least one daughter.

  If so blessed, she vowed to name her of all things …

  Savannah.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Months after my novel Crossing Ebenezer Creek was published I began to wonder about my characters, other than Caleb, who survived the journey.

  What happened to them?

  What, who did they become?

  Their offspring?

  Inventing Victoria arose from this curiosity. I seized upon a minor character in Cro
ssing Ebenezer Creek, Praline, and began my journey, a journey into the life of a girl born during Reconstruction, a time when positive forces were at work to make America live up to its ideals—when slavery was abolished, when black people became US citizens, when black men gained the right to the national vote. But then …

  Gains, strides toward true democracy were crushed. White supremacy triumphed.

  Still, against the odds many black people persevered, more than a few thrived. And Inventing Victoria became a journey into a rather neglected aspect of black history: the black middle class and black aristocracy of the past. Besides Frederick Douglass, the black strivers, black successes who appear in Victoria’s world in person and by mention include West Point cadet Johnson C. Whittaker, Booker T. Washington, John Wesley Cromwell, John Deveaux, Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, John Mercer Langston, James Wormley, Elizabeth Keckley, Henry E. Baker, Madam Selika, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Mary “Mollie” Church Terrell, George Boyer Vashon, Samuel and Alice Proctor, Peter and George Downing, and Reverend Handy, Metropolitan AME Church. And oh, yes, Orindatus Simon Bolívar Wall!

  Also out of history are the astrologer Madam Smith, James Jefferson’s Barber Saloon, JP Kendy’s grocery store, Eugene Morehead’s Forest City Bar and Restaurant, and Clapp’s 99 Cents Store.

  Out of history came other small things as well. For example, according to the 1880 US Federal Census Savannah had at least one Scriven and one Bogins. There was a Jane Scriven “keeping house” and the laundress Josephine Bogins. That’s how I came up with the gravediggers’ names. On that same census page I found an Emma King and Katy Taylor, living on Minis Street. For both, in the column for occupation there was “prostitute.”

  I looked to history for other characters too. Abby Bowfield is based on Rachel Brownfield (1833–1884), a woman who while still in slavery leased a mansion on Bryan Street and turned it into a boardinghouse that was eventually quite fine. “The 18-by-30-foot dining room was covered with an ingrain woolen carpet and featured a large leafed mahogany dining table,” says David T. Dixon in his article “The Wealthiest Slave in Savannah: Rachel Brownfield and the True Price of Freedom.”

  Dorcas Vashon was inspired, in part, by Georgia’s first black nun, Mother Mathilda Beasley (1832–1903), who went about doing so much good. Among other things, she founded Savannah’s St. Francis Home for Colored Orphans, an institution for girls.

  Dorcas Vashon’s ancestry is based on that of Robert, Willam, and Joseph Purvis. The wealthy Robert Purvis, who spent most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, cofounded the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833). He married Harriet Forten, a daughter of another wealthy Philadelphian, sailmaker James Forten. One of Robert and Harriet’s children is the Dr. Charles Purvis mentioned in Inventing Victoria.

  At times I took liberties with history. The March 21, 1882, issue of the DC’s Evening Star announced that Frederick Douglass would give a lecture on John Brown at Bethel Hall that night. As I found no transcript of this lecture I used the speech Douglass gave on John Brown at West Virginia’s Storer College in late May 1881. Also, Henry E. Baker did give a lecture on “Originality” for the Monday Night Literary Club in the spring of 1882, but it was not held at Frederick Douglass’s Cedar Hill (though Cedar Hill did host this club’s events at times). For Baker’s lecture I borrowed from his book The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years, published in 1913.

  Some other tidbits: Merchants and Miners is the company that called itself “Queen of Sea Routes,” and it purchased the Saragossa in the 1870s. The books Victoria beheld in Frederick Douglass’s library come from the National Park Service’s list of what it believes to be the vast majority of books that Douglass owned. You can check out this list at https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/upload/Books-in-FDs-library.pdf.

  The other items Victoria gazes upon come from my taking a virtual tour of the library at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

  The lawsuits challenging segregation that Victoria and Wyatt discuss were real and Wyatt was prescient. Shortly after they marry, on October 15, 1883, the US Supreme Court will declare the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. In 1896 comes the Plessy decision in which the high court will sanction segregation in places of public accommodation such as hotels, restaurants, theaters, and schools. In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson will give the green light to segregation in federal agencies. From office space and restrooms to cafeterias, black civil servants will be humiliated by Jim Crow.

  Victoria and Wyatt’s children will grow up in a very different DC.

  Along with nineteenth-century newspapers, magazines, and ladies’ books I am indebted to Black Savannah, 1788–1864 by Whittington B. Johnson (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996) and Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War by Jacqueline Jones (New York: Vintage, 2009), both of which I first read while at work on Crossing Ebenezer Creek. I am also indebted to Lawrence Otis Graham’s The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), Jacqueline M. Moore’s Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital, 1880–1920 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999), and Elizabeth Dowling Taylor’s The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era (New York: Amistad, 2017).

  History!

  What a journey!

  RESEARCH AND SOURCES

  “Freewillum”: Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), p. 46.

  “At six o’clock yesterday … cut off”: Savannah Morning News, April 7, 1880, p. 2.

  The woman who left $750 for the religious instruction of black people in Georgia was Henrietta Parker of New Britain, Connecticut: Colored Tribune, April 1, 1876, p. 2.

  On the murder of an old man named John: “Another Willful Murder—Where Is It to End?” Colored Tribune, March 11, 1876, p. 3. The black man’s last name was Daniel. His killers were James and John Graham.

  “Deed to the house on Minis Street”: based on a deed of conveyance from M. J. McKnitt to M. B. L. Ramsey, October 2, 1882, http://dlc.lib.utk.edu/spc/view?docId=tei/0012_000060_000502_0000/0012_000060_000502_0000.xml.

  “Air Brick.… Charlton House, Kent”: Isabella Beeton. Beeton’s Housewife’s Treasury of Domestic Information (London: Ward, Lock & Co, between 1879 and 1890), p. xxv.

  “Position gives power.… and healthful position”: Platt R. Spencer. Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship (New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., 1866), p. 24.

  pä-ˌtā-də-ˌfwä-ˈgrä: pronunciation guide is from Merriam Webster’s, online edition, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pâté%20de%20foie%20gras.

  A-bate' … As-sid'u-ous-ly: pronunciation guide from Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language. Revised by Chauncey A. Goodrich and Noah Porter (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1865), pp. 2, 9, 20, 33, 84.

  “Visiting dress of purple plush.… elephant silk and camel’s hair.” Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine, December 1880, p. 586.

  “Do not pour coffee or tea.… excessively ill-bred”: Florence Hartley. The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1872), pp. 107, 110, 112, 114.

  Description of Wormley’s Hotel: Carol Gelderman. A Free Man of Color and His Hotel: Race, Reconstruction, and the Role of the Federal Government (Washington, DC: Potomac Books Inc., 2012). Kindle.

  “Not to fan the flame.… my good fortune to share”: Frederick Douglass. John Brown: An Address by Frederick Douglass at the Fourteenth Anniversary of Storer College of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, May 30, 1881 (Dover, NH: Morning Star Job Printing House, 1881), p. 5.

  “There ought not to be anything.… originality of thought”: Henry E. Baker. The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years (Project Gutenberg, 2007), e-book, p. 11.

  “Mr. Samuel Proctor has added.… perfect for archery and croquet”: “Health and Pleasure,” People’s Advocate, May 21,
1881, p. 3.

  On the Victoria: “Fashion Notes,” People’s Advocate, November 26, 1881, p.1

  Invitation to the Fitzhugh Christmas gala: Based on a sample from Isabella Beeton. Beeton’s Housewife’s Treasury of Domestic Information (London: Ward, Lock & Co, between 1879 and 1890), p. 54.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So grateful.

  To two amazing, hardworking, probing, wonderful editors! First, Mary Kate Castellani, and then, when she went on leave, Susan Dobinick. The transition was absolutely painless, so seamless.

  I also had the good, great fortune to work with the assiduous, thoughtful, and so very engaged copyeditor Patricia McHugh, proofreader Regina Castillo, and production editor Diane Aronson. I am also grateful to so many others at Bloomsbury for their hard work and support: Claire Stetzer, Beth Eller, Courtney Griffin, Brittany Mitchell, Donna Mark, Melissa Kavonic, Cindy Loh, and Cristina Gilbert.

  Huge thanks is due my sister, Nelta, a graduate of FIT, who was super helpful with descriptions of clothing, especially the really fancy items. I also thank L. J. Dean with the National Railway Historical Society for the generous response to my questions about the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad and to Brittany Mayo at the Georgia Historical Society for the swift response to my inquiry about Shad Island.

  Thanks, too, to Sharon G. Flake for sound, solid feedback on the early manuscript.

  And to my agent, Jennifer Lyons: as always you have been matchless.

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  This electronic edition first published in the United States of America in January 2019 by Bloomsbury YA

  Text copyright © 2019 by Tonya Bolden

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Sarah J. Coleman

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