Mistress Suffragette

by Diana Forbes

  Very tall and muscular, he looked to have woolly hair.

  He stood by the coffee table, crinkling hundreds of pieces of paper and dropping them on the floor. As each rumpled blob of paper hit the wooden planks, my breath heaved in my chest. I hunkered at the doorway, wanting to flee—all the way back to Newport.

  Why had I let Lucinda persuade me to move here? Boston was filled with peril. Straining my eyes to adjust to the darkness, I stayed motionless.

  The stranger turned around. The moonlight lanced across his face. I pulled back from the crack in the doorway, praying he couldn’t see me. His wild eyes bulged.

  “I know you’re there, and this is a warning,” he said.

  He walked out the front door and closed it with an irritated slam. Opening the door of my bedchamber all the way, I tiptoed into the parlor. I didn’t see anyone. Hugging the dark walls, I tried to satisfy myself that there was no other intruder in our quarters. I turned on a small oil lamp in the room. Stepping on crumpled pieces of paper everywhere, I flew to the front door, locked it, then ran back to knock on Lucinda’s door.

  She was a heavy sleeper but roused with my repeated rapping and cries. Motioning with her hands for me to keep breathing, she turned on all the lights in the small flat. Dim shadows skated across the low ceiling.

  On the parlor floor lay hundreds of Verdana’s purple sheets that she and I had put up earlier—every one crumpled and strewn as garbage across the rough wooden floorboards. On the coffee table was a note from the intruder.

  “GET OUT OF BOSTON” it screamed in angry script.

  Friday, June 9, 1893

  Early the next morning, I saw the intruder again. He was at the market. He wore a corroded, black felt derby, which sat on his head crookedly due to his wild hair, and a red, twilled flannel shirt with a giant coffee stain on it. I dove behind a fruit cart so he wouldn’t see me, then crept up behind the cantaloupe to spy on him. He had bristly facial hair sprouting like cacti all over his face.

  I returned to my flat with a new resolve: he had to be stopped. Lucinda ducked across the hallway to the horrid water closet to ready herself. I sat in the parlor and stared at her teak box. How would it feel to wield power in my hand?

  While I waited, I opened the box and studied the gun inside. Gingerly I lifted it. The instrument felt heavy. Could I shoot it? Doing so would be against my father’s explicit instructions, and there was power in that, too.

  As I fingered her gun, I recalled my father’s extensive rifle collection. He’d frequently attend the elaborate hunting parties thrown by our neighbors. But for his daughters, he’d advocated less violent methods of downing prey and had urged my sister and me to take up bow-hunting instead. A bow and arrow had superior marksmanship, he’d argued, and was less potentially debilitating to the person wielding it.

  Pointing the gun up and away from me, I closed one eye, found an invisible spot on the ceiling, and imagined it as my target. “Bang!” I said.

  Carefully I lowered the gun, sliding it back in the box. Had the man who’d entered our parlor owned a gun? I hoped not.

  “Of course he owns a gun!” Verdana boomed. “He’s a man, isn’t he?”

  By mid-morning, Verdana, Lucinda, and I were en route to the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground.

  Overnight I’d caught the shooting bug, and Verdana had assured me that the abandoned graveyard was the best (indeed, only) place to practice. No one there would complain about women shooting at targets except, possibly, some very old ghosts.

  Now, standing on tiptoes, I imitated the intruder’s lumbering walk. I stretched my hand over my head. “He’s over six feet tall.” I lowered both shoulders. “He hunches when he walks. His hair is wild and scraggly…”

  “He’s an animal,” Lucinda cried.

  Verdana placed her hands on her wide hips and rocked back on her clunky boots. “Tall…wild hair…walks like a gorilla. It’s your neighbor, Thomas Stalker,” she shouted. “He’s been a thorn in the Movement’s side for months.” She lifted her hand in the air and spun it around like a lasso. Impersonating a cowboy, she warned us that Stalker liked to frighten the young women in the Movement—especially the pretty ones.

  “We don’t scare,” declared Lucinda.

  I placed my arm around Lucinda’s shoulder.

  Verdana placed her arm around my shoulder. “No we don’t,” she said.

  I was sure she was just being friendly.

  Walking through the ancient graveyard, I felt we were on sacred ground. The grass looked spindly and yellowed but indestructible, as if it had survived for hundreds of years and would for hundreds more. Verdana told us that British soldiers, stationed in Boston, had used the cemetery for target practice during the American Revolution.

  She pointed to the headstones around us, many so old the names had been edged out. Pockmarks, caused by shells, dimpled the stones. Verdana led us up the spongy embankment to a decrepit, pitted gravestone marked Captain Daniel Malcolm. She said the headstone had already been shot at numerous times. She didn’t seem to think one or two more bullet holes would do any harm.

  Somehow that seemed disrespectful. Ahead, a stately old oak tree spread its branches like a ballerina holding her arms in second position. I asked Verdana if I might aim for the tree instead.

  She shook her head. “The headstone gives you specific letters to aim at.”

  Lucinda extracted the pistol from the teak box, then showed me how to open the barrel and empty it of bullets. Step by step, she taught me how to load it and form a sight line. She explained that because the Colt .45 issued in 1872 had no safety latch, it was imperative to always keep one chamber empty. Placing the instrument of death in my hand she said, “Pull.”

  “The e in Daniel,” I declared.

  I pulled back the trigger and released it. To my horror, I hit the stone dead center in the ‘e.’

  “She’s a natural!” Verdana shouted.

  I reeled from the reverberation of the pistol in my hand. The smell of gunpowder tickled my nostrils. My hand trembled. I wanted to release the gun, but my grip was wrapped around it so tightly that I couldn’t let it go.

  Picking up Lucinda’s gun, Verdana found her mark. She fired a shot, also hitting the e in Daniel. Casually, she handed the gun back to its owner. Verdana cocked her head at me. “I’m assuming you’re now prepared to accept my offer.”

  I nodded. Public speaking agreed with me, and she had more than enough fire for both of us. Verdana hugged me, sending off plumes of lavender talcum powder from her velvet smoking jacket. Maybe she wasn’t as manly as I’d thought.

  After she detached herself from me, Verdana eyed my roommate. “Your friend here has spoken highly of you.” Verdana rubbed her thumb against her forefinger. “But we can afford to pay only one person. I wish you well in your endeavors.” She shook Lucinda’s hand as if closing a formal business interview.

  My friend’s olive skin brightened to red, and her normally full lips appeared swollen, almost as if someone had punched her in the mouth.

  Seeing her so upset made me press Verdana harder. “Maybe you can find it in your heart to find a place for Lucinda. She has skills! She is a wonderful tutor and a great markswoman. She plays the piano beautifully. Perhaps, before our speeches, she could play an uplifting recital march.”

  Verdana kissed me on the forehead, looking for all the world like a cheerful boy. “The only thing we need is a public speaker,” she said. “And you’re the one I’ve chosen.”

  Without firing a shot, she had certainly hit her target.

  Chapter 12

  Vertigo

  Monday, June 12, 1893

  Rumor had it that Amelia Bloomer, the woman responsible for starting the hoopla about women abandoning their petticoats for bloomers, was horribly ill. She was too sick to write for The Women’s Advocate, too sick to appear on stage, and most people who knew her thought she was too sick to leave her home. So said all the Boston newspapers.

  As Amelia Blo
omer lived somewhere in Iowa and hadn’t herself worn bloomers in years, I failed to see how this news had any impact on the Movement in Boston. But Verdana, who’d arrived at my doorstep carrying three newspapers covering the story, informed me that I was being terribly shortsighted. Apparently, Amelia Bloomer’s decline was a golden opportunity for us to carry forth the message. And Verdana had just the method to do it.

  “We should rent bicycles!” she roared, “and show up to our next meeting riding them. There’s no better argument for the Rational Dress Movement. It’s impossible to ride a bike in a skirt.”

  “Is it? ” I asked intrigued. I had never ridden a bicycle before. “Are they hard to pedal?”

  “Easy as pie,” she said. “But not in a skirt and bustle.”

  I had supreme confidence in my bicycle-riding prowess. The sport couldn’t be any harder than riding a horse sidesaddle. I thought back to the day I had ridden with Mr. and Mrs. Daggers and shivered. It had to be easier than that.

  I wore a long flowered skirt with a small bustle. As usual, Verdana looked like a fellow in her gigantic bloomers. Crafted of bright purple silk, they were fashioned in the Turkish style, arching out over her thighs and tapering in at her ankles.

  The sun decided to make an all too rare appearance, and everything looked more promising as a result. On West Newtown Street, people were out and about in carriages, their horses kicking up the dirt from the street onto the brick pavements. Young women strolled the sidewalks, sporting delicate parasols for sun protection. Lucinda, who’d also been turned down at the Rational Clothing Store, had resolved to look for a job outside the Movement. She’d made an appointment with the headmaster of the Girls’ Latin School, leaving Verdana and me the whole day to ourselves to test out bicycles.

  Verdana knew a merchant a few blocks away who rented them out for a dollar an hour. The price seemed steep, given what the lecture circuit paid. She laughed away my doubts, urging me to consider any costs associated with bicycling as an investment.

  Verdana was quite the scientist about bicycling! She viewed our outing as a grand experiment. First, she wanted to determine if I could actually ride a bike wearing one of my long skirts. And then, if I could manage it, she wanted us to decide if we should both ride bicycles as a gimmick in our upcoming speech. It would be my first paid speech, and Verdana intended to make it spectacular.

  She linked her arm through mine, and we strolled up the boulevard. Delicately, I extracted my arm from hers. In Newport, I’d seen women with their arms entwined and hadn’t given it a second thought. But here in Boston, with its reputation for Boston marriages, I fretted that any sort of arm entanglement might be misconstrued. She gave a very slight shrug, put her muscled arm down by her side, and we continued on our way.

  We arrived at a small establishment, which rented out all sorts of wheeled vehicles by the hour. There were bicycles (the young merchant called them “safety bicycles”), tricycles and quadracycles for the risk-averse, as well as the old penny-farthings from England, which featured a giant front wheel with the seat on top and a small back wheel. I’d read that the penny-farthings were exceptionally fast but wholly unsafe. That did not prevent certain dandies and other athletic types from taking them out for sport. One saw well-dressed men lying on their rear ends all over Boston, usually with some sort of fallen bicycle right next to them.

  “Two safety bicycles,” Verdana called out, smiling at the straw-haired store merchant.

  He was a youth of about twenty, with a shy smile that darted in and out like the sun playing peek-a-boo behind a cloud.

  She paid him two dollars, waving away my offer to pay my share. “And I expect my friend here will require a lesson,” she continued.

  “Your dress will get stuck in the wheel, Miss,” the youth said to me with his pleasant half smile. “Do you have any bloomers like your friend? Or a bicycling costume perhaps?”

  “I don’t,” I said, picturing the ugly tweed skirts three inches above the ground and the horrid walking shoes with gaiters.

  He looked at me dubiously, but rolled one black, safety bicycle out to the brick pavement in front of his establishment. Verdana tromped after us in her heavy boots and bloomers. She reminded me of a young, overfed filly.

  “If you hold the handlebar on her right, and I hold the handlebar on her left, then she can just hold up her dress while she pedals,” she shouted. He nodded, staring at my long dress.

  Holding the bicycle steady, the merchant instructed me to climb onto the tiny seat in between the two wheels. It felt like mounting a horse—a small, unsteady one with only two feet.

  “Does it feel uncomfortable?” Verdana asked, once I had positioned myself on the awkward seat.

  “I can’t feel a thing under my bustle,” I joked. In truth, I worried I’d fall down the moment I pressed forward.

  “Isn’t she marvelous?” Verdana asked the tow-haired merchant. “Such bravery under adversity. Now, Penelope, we are going to move. Pick up your skirt and underskirts as far as you can on the right side, and no matter what, do not let go of your skirts!”

  I was terrified. I could see how quickly my outfit could get caught in the chain drive of the rear wheel. I would be like those girls who were killed in the horrible factories that were springing up everywhere. The bicycle wheels would keep spinning until my dress and petticoats suffocated me to death. My legs would get caught in the contraption. My whole body would become contorted. My dress was wholly, hideously irrational, and here I had been defending it on the suffrage tour.

  “Don’t forget to breathe while you hold your skirts,” advised Verdana, smiling at me with her rakish grin. “Now, pedal,” she shouted.

  I pushed the two pedals with my shoes, while Verdana and the merchant each grabbed a handlebar to steady the bike. Slowly and painstakingly, the three of us advanced twenty paces.

  “You have good balance, Miss,” said the merchant. “But that dress will be the death of you. If you take the handlebars in your hands, your skirt will jam the bicycle.”

  “You’re right,” I said, sucking in my breath and struggling to keep my upper body as still as possible. I felt like a broken marionette—my brain was controlling my arms and torso, but my legs were moving about on their own accord.

  “You’re doing fine,” Verdana said, breathing hard as she pushed her side of the bicycle up a small hill at the end of a block. Sweat poured off her face, and I felt badly that she had to exert herself so hard on my behalf. We reached a plateau. After ten more paces, she signaled that it was time to stop. I dismounted with relief.

  “Not so fast,” she said. “I have an idea. Take it off.”

  “Take what off?” I said warily.

  “Your skirt. Take it off,” Verdana commanded.

  “Here?” I asked. We were in the middle of a large block where carriages, men on horseback, and female pedestrians had full access.

  “Don’t be a priss,” she said. “No one’s looking. This is Boston.”

  I shook my head vigorously. I would not take off my clothing in public.

  She did not intend for me to go naked, she explained with a grin. She merely suggested a trade. “For this exercise, you’ll wear my bloomers and I’ll put on your skirt,” she said. “Otherwise, we’ll never know if you can ride unencumbered.”

  “Smart,” the merchant said.

  “No it’s not,” I said. “It’s a terrible idea.”

  “Would you try on the bloomers if you could change into them unseen?” Verdana wheedled.

  Nothing I said would dissuade her. Why had I moved to this crazy city where the women dressed like men and the men were as helpless as women? I handed the bike to the merchant, who rolled it back the short distance to his shop while we walked with him, side by side.

  Verdana and I retired to a small room in the back of his establishment and exchanged garments. I was surprised that she could fit into my skirt. I had thought of her as much heavier than me, but really she was just a bit plumpe
r around the hips and thighs. The big difference was that she didn’t wear corsets to nip her waist or petticoats to define her shape, so she looked squarer, making no attempt to achieve the hourglass figure coveted by most women. Her garments were far less constricting, emphasizing breathability above all else. As a result, her bloomers fit me easily, and I had to admit they were comfortable.

  I jumped up and down a few times. Then I did it again. Her bloomers were the only garment I’d ever worn that allowed me the freedom to jump.

  Outside the store, I mounted the bicycle again. Verdana held one side of the machine, the merchant held the other, and I just pedaled forward. The three of us moved up the hill in unison until we reached the plateau.

  “Do you feel confident enough to have me let go?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. And she did.

  After ten more paces, I felt brave enough to have the merchant release the other side of the bicycle. I pedaled for ten more paces, feeling carefree. The breeze ran through my hair, blowing the red morass up and away from my face. The Boston gloom rolled off my shoulders. As the pedals glided, my feet found their rhythm. I started to sing “Daisy Bell,” aloud, a catchy tune about a bicycle built for two. This bicycle was built for me. I could hear Verdana shouting something in the background, but I paid no attention. Then her voice became fainter, drowned out by my own singing voice. I had never felt so free.

  A woman walked out of a store and directly into my path. I had no idea how to stop the bike. I tried to pedal backwards. I tried to stop pedaling. Nothing stopped the bike.

  I swerved out of her way, hit a bump on the sidewalk, and blacked out.

  Thursday, June 15, 1893

  I would have recognized her voice anywhere. My mother trilled up the front steps of the flat and marched into our hovel with authority. She barreled her way into the dingy parlor. “You can run but you can’t avoid me,” she said by way of greeting.

  Covered in blankets, I lay on the tattered, green couch. My teeth chattered. My right shoulder felt as if it had collided with a bucket of crushed glass. Every move I made delivered a fresh insult, shooting stabs of pain down my whole arm. And now Mother was here, whose only suggested cure for whatever ailed me was an eligible man.