Mistress Suffragette

by Diana Forbes

  As the suffragists continued to spill into the lobby, I lost sight of Mr. Daggers among the sea of women. I tried to find him again with my eyes. It was then I noticed a red-haired waif of about twenty had latched her arm onto his. She sported dark rims around her eyes that even her pearled face powder couldn’t mask. Her long hair looked unkempt, and her rouge was smeared. I wondered if one of her cheeks was bruised, or if that discoloration was merely a trick of the light. In spite of her flaws she was unbearably pretty. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear. I sucked in my breath and felt the hard back of the bench dig into the hollow space between my shoulders.

  Apparently he was managing just fine without me.

  Verdana rushed back to my side. She riffled through her short red hair and stared at me as if she could will me to stay awake. Bloomered, she looked bigger than ever. She was the same height and only a bit heavier than me, yet somehow she took up a lot more space. As she gazed at me, I felt my eyelids grow heavy.

  “I suppose we have no choice, then,” she said. “Come.”

  Linking her arm though mine, she escorted me to a small, unlit room several feet away. Once inside, I collapsed onto the cot.

  We were in a deserted bicycle store. From the wall hung iron chains.

  I wore lacy black bloomers in the Turkish style and a black satin corset on top.

  “You look like a china figurine all wrapped in lace,” Edgar Daggers said. Moonlight streamed through the window—the room’s sole source of light.

  “All women look like this,” I said.

  “Yes, but you’re not like the others. You want to make your mark.” With one brusque movement he tore off my bloomers. Buttons clattered against the cold, stone floor.

  “What if your wife finds out?”

  “It will come as no surprise. She expects it of me.” Edgar ordered me to climb onto the bicycle and keep pedaling until he told me to stop.

  I mounted the bicycle and pedaled faster and faster so that I might escape.

  But the bike refused to move.

  “You’re mine,” he said, approaching me from behind and enveloping me in his strong arms.

  Perspiration soaked through my corset.

  “Let’s unwrap you,” he whispered, starting to unlace the garment.

  “Don’t take it away from me,” I pleaded. “Please, don’t take away my pride.”

  But he had a small knife, and he kept cutting away at the fabric until the garment lay in ribbons on the floor.

  Now stripped bare, I kept pedaling. The bicycle grew taller, and soon I found myself atop a magnificent white steed. I kicked it hard, and it galloped away from Edgar to my freedom.

  The sound of my screams woke me up.

  Heavy boots stomped on the wooden floor, making a terrible racket. I heard Verdana’s hands pawing the walls as she tried to locate the gas lamp. She cursed under her breath. She knew some language that would make the members of the Ladies Bridge and Mahjong Society swoon.

  “What is it? What happened?” her voice penetrated the dark room.

  “Nothing.”

  She cursed again as her hands fumbled for the elusive lamp. Her voice snapped. “No matter how your hair looks, it has to do. The show must go on, darling. The amphitheater is teeming with people.” She bumped into a piece of furniture and howled. “We need to go around the back, get on our bikes, and perform our magic.”

  In the dark, I rose. Prepared or not, it was time to take the stage. I pressed my hands down my green dress, trying to smooth away any wrinkles that might have formed in my sleep. I opened the door to the well-lit hallway. In a matter of moments, I would face the biggest audience of Verdana’s career, and I suspected there would be just as many critics in the house as supporters.

  Verdana rode her bicycle onto the stage, and I rode the quadracycle. The audience murmured its approval. On quick inspection, I spotted some familiar faces: in the front row, my mother, her lips wilting under the weight of her displeasure, and Lucinda, almond eyes ablaze with pride. Sam sat holding a notebook and fountain pen, furiously taking notes. There were also one hundred and ninety-seven other people in the room, some of whom looked vaguely familiar, most of them women.

  Verdana hopped off her bicycle with ease and motioned for me to stay where I was. She reached into her bloomer pocket, extracted the typewritten speech we had worked on together, held it high in the air, then tore it into pieces.

  “Ladies, Ladies,” she yelled. “It’s wonderful to see so many of you here tonight. It’s a brilliant turnout. Thank you. As you know, we’re here to talk about Rational Dress.” She turned about in her baggy bloomers to audience cheers. “I was born and raised right here in Boston and have always considered myself an American. I like beefsteak chops, baked potatoes, and apple pie. Like you, I hope Congress will not pass another income tax law.” The crowd erupted into a standing ovation. She motioned with her hands for the audience to simmer down.

  “I am proud that our nation revolted against the British—I know there was a ‘tea party’ right here in Boston—and that we declared our independence long ago. But for a nation that’s so forward thinking, we are surprisingly backward when it comes to women’s dress. Consider my friend over here…” Four hundred eyes stared at me. I wondered if they could see right through me, the accidental suffragist.

  “She is confined—yes, confined—to riding a quadracycle. And all because of current fashion dictates.”

  Verdana motioned to me. “Penelope, would you like to show the crowd what happens when you try to ride a bicycle in the dress you’re wearing?”

  “No, I would not.”

  The crowd roared.

  “My friend, dressed in the height of fashion from one of Paris’s finest dressmakers, does not care to mount a ‘safety bicycle’ because she recently realized that they’re not all that safe!”

  The throng burst into a short round of applause. Verdana continued to speak at length about the benefits of Rational Dress. This time, the viewers jumped and cheered. I could almost feel the ceiling rafters shake. Verdana bowed. It was the dawning of her celebrity.

  She ambled over to me. With her red hair, muscular build, and thunderous voice, she had a certain magnetism. The audience was rapt, watching her every move. I stayed seated on the quadracycle and silently fretted. It was impossible to add anything of merit to the talk she’d just delivered. To attempt it would be foolhardy.

  “What do you think we should do?” she asked under her breath.

  “Leave.”

  “Without your uttering a word? After all of your diligent preparation?” Her large eyes expanded into gray pools. Apparently, the prospect of my missing an opportunity to shine had never entered her mind.

  “By sitting here on this contraption in this gown, I’ve already demonstrated both the beauty and the impracticality of traditional dress. Meanwhile, there could be no more dramatic a speech than the one you delivered. Anything else will just depress the audience’s reaction. Shouldn’t we stop now while the crowd is with us?”

  “You’re a dear to be concerned for their entertainment.” She tossed the crowd a loving glance. “But this is your first speech. You have to say something.” She waved to her adoring fans and playfully half bowed to them. They became raucous again. I really wished she’d stop rousing them. Irony of ironies, the woman who wanted me to speak out on behalf of the cause was making it impossible to do so.

  She stamped her heavy boot against the wooden floor. “I don’t pay you to shy away from the spotlight. You’re here to speak. Speak!”

  “Verdana, please, I’m happy for you not to pay me tonight. But it’s time for us to exit.”

  She ran her hand through her short red hair. A bead of sweat glistened at her temple, exposing a bulging vein. “Take a chance. Feel what it’s like to matter, to influence people. At the very least, it will be excellent practice for you as a novice. Crowds are crowds. This one is relatively well behaved.”

  For a stampede
of cattle it was. A stampede on the cusp of turning into an unruly mob. In this respect, surely women were men’s equal and needed no encouragement.

  Verdana smiled at the multitude. The room reverberated with the sound of cheers.

  She placed her large hands on her wide hips and glanced down at me on my quadracycle. I felt trapped between her will and the crowd’s.

  “I don’t mind speaking under ordinary circumstances,” I said. “I just don’t want to dissipate the lively energy in the room.”

  Feet stamped; hands clapped; people shouted. The cacophony was joyous.

  “Try it,” she urged, never taking her eye from the audience. “Do something dramatic to make them stop making such a ruckus.” She jumped up and down. “Oh, I have an idea. Why don’t you ride my safety bicycle and deliberately fall off it. That should get their attention.”

  Had she gone mad? It had taken me days to recuperate from my bicycle accident, and now she wanted me to stage one? One should not create false accidents for any reason. It bordered on immoral.

  Gingerly, taking great care not to trip over my long dress, I rose from my four-wheeled contraption. I thrust back my shoulders, determined to appease my employer. My silk dress rustled, petticoats swishing underneath. It was a sound only I could hear amid the shouts of “Verdana! Verdana!” Quietly, I walked to the center of the stage, motioning with my hands for the swarm to hold its rowdy applause. Verdana’s enamored public ignored me.

  She sighed, then folded her arms across her chest. “Get on with it,” she said.

  I directed my full attention to the braying mob.

  “Women! Ladies!” I screamed, stamping my feet on the wooden stage. I twirled about in my long green dress, cupping my hands around my lips like a human speaking trumpet and shouted to the members of the audience to cease.

  The crowd would not stop applauding my predecessor. I wasn’t invincible. I was invisible.

  Patches of sweat broke out under my arms. What would it take to get their attention? Perhaps it would require outlandishness—an outsized bravura on par with Verdana’s suggestion to fall off the bike. I glanced around the stage. Save for the bicycle and the quadracycle, there was only one other prop: me.

  Trying to ignore my mother’s flushed face, I did the unthinkable. I undid the top button of my gown. Remembering my dream about Mr. Daggers, I unfastened another button. At last, the crowd started to quiet down.

  And then a third button. The crowd went silent.

  Verdana was instantly by my side. “Land sakes,” she rasped. “What do you think you’re doing—a striptease? In front of my audience?” She frantically looked from me to the crowd and back at me again.

  “Just trying to get their attention,” I snapped. My hand hovered over another button. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “The speech is over,” she said under her breath. She waved her hand at her beloved audience as if conducting an orchestra, then gripped my elbow. “But do take a bow with me. They should see we’re in this together.”

  But were we? Or was she just in it for herself? I pulled my elbow out of her grasp.

  “Blame it, Penelope. Take a bow with me. Now.” She stamped her heavy boot against the wood floor.

  I let my arm drop back by her side. Verdana reached out and grabbed me by the hand, and the two of us bowed in unison.

  Chapter 20

  The Stage Prop

  Tuesday, July 11, 1893

  Very early the next morning, en route to a meeting at the New England Women’s Club, Verdana and I returned the rented bicycles. She rolled hers up to a group of penny-farthings and other wheeled vehicles. I hung back with the quadracycle.

  “You were brilliant,” said the shy youth, pumping her hand.

  “You caught our performance?” she asked, smiling broadly.

  “Yes M’am. Everyone did.”

  I could only hope they remembered her glory, not my own antic. I’d replayed the evening over in my mind and wasn’t sure what else I should have done to quiet the crowd. I didn’t know whether to congratulate Verdana, air my frustration, or apologize.

  “Did you hear that?” Verdana called out. “He said everyone.” She rushed over and threw her arms around me, pulling me into a swift hug.

  “Congratulations, Verdana.”

  She beamed.

  Stagecraft. Was it art, science, or pure magic? Clearly Verdana possessed the mastery of an illusionist, and I wondered if her bloomers were akin to a magician’s black hat. Did her pantaloons allow her the freedom to slip into a different persona entirely? I turned and opened the door for her.

  Directly outside the bike shop, a mob of women clustered. One woman, wearing a silver cross around her neck, held a tiny piece of paper out to Verdana along with a fountain pen.

  “For my daughter,” she pleaded, tugging on Verdana’s sleeve.

  “What does she want?” Verdana asked, looking at me blankly. I think she expected me to translate for her what the woman had just said (although it was delivered in perfect English).

  “Your signature, Miss,” said the woman. “Her name is Amy McLeay.”

  “Oh-ho,” said Verdana, almost tripping backwards for joy on her clunky boots.

  “Today, Wyoming; tomorrow, Colorado,” another woman shouted, a look of misty triumph in her bloodshot eyes. She stuck out a small piece of paper for Verdana to sign. Verdana dutifully scribbled her name for her ardent admirer, and we continued on our merry way.

  “What the devil is she talking about?” I asked.

  “The vote, silly. Don’t you ever read a newspaper?”

  I pictured the gargantuan stack of Chicago Tribunes stashed away in Mother’s locked closet. I still had a lot of catching up to do.

  “Never mind,” said Verdana. “We have to let it be for now.”

  “Why?” For the first time I worried that the hoopla about hoop skirts and corsets might pass too quickly for us to have any true impact. “Why not attach our cause to the hems of an even greater cause?”

  She slipped her arm through mine. “Because the politics are too difficult to navigate.”

  As we threaded our way through swarms of women, well-wishers hounded her. Some of her fans wore bloomers; others wore skirts; all were potential recruits to her female army. And they had loyalty to their new leader—her. Sometimes the women yelled “Verdana!” Sometimes they screamed “Miss Jones!” And, after a few blocks of watching women fawn all over her, I was caught up in the spell of her new status as much as any of them.

  My walking partner could not stop smiling. She grinned at each person who lauded her but never broke her stride. Fame suited her. The two of us moved through the milling crowds so quickly that it felt like we were marching in our own private parade. I longed for her to slow down and bask in the attention. Indeed, I half hoped that some of it might rub off on me. But she seemed disinclined to tarry.

  We briskly made our way up the avenue to Tremont House. Verdana said, “We are a house divided. One part of the Movement wants us to focus on the vote. Another faction wants to ally itself with Negro causes.” She told me that many of the women in the Movement were former abolitionists. Another division wanted men to join forces with us. Still another group wished to keep men out of the dialogue. In Colorado alone, some declared that women should vote because they were men’s equal, while others claimed our housekeeping and caretaking skills had earned us the right to vote. Another faction anxiously watched suffrage activities in New Zealand and reported on them nonstop, to the distraction of all.

  “It’s impossible to get a group of women to agree on anything,” declared Verdana. “No wonder all of the fashion designers in the world are men.”

  We both straightened our bloomers and dresses, kicked the mud off of our boots and shoes, and delicately made our way uphill.

  “But,” she said, “amid so many competing factions, the Rational Dress Movement is a triumph. I insist that we continue to devote all of our resources to it. Don’t yo
u see that dress—Rational Dress—is practically a symbol for the Movement as a whole? And yet, the new dress code is so easy to explain. Gosh, even a man could understand it.” She licked her lips. “Oops, I almost forgot…” She reached into her dress pocket, pulled out some coins, and deposited the clanking change in my hand. “Here’s your pay for speaking last night.”

  I stared at the change. “But your audience wouldn’t let me speak.”

  “True.” She held her hands up to her forehead in an exaggerated “thinking” pose. “Because you’re new at this, you should be sure to speak first next time. You’ll get the practice you need, and the crowd will behave itself. And if it doesn’t…” She held out a hand as if thrusting a whip at the audience and made a whooshing sound.

  “If I speak first, it must be for Rational Dress,” I said, dropping the coins in my pocket and noting their pleasant jangle. “The gimmick of me defending the old dress code doesn’t sway your audience at all.”

  She clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Why that’s wonderful, dear. I thought this day would never come. Do you want to borrow another pair of my bloomers? I have some with lilac lilies and yellow buttercups. And there’s a splendid pair with purple sunflowers. Oh, and I just bought a muslin pair with—”

  “Absolutely not. I still think bloomers are hideous.”

  Just because I couldn’t argue against the point that traditional dress imprisoned us didn’t mean I was ready to relinquish it. If only the political statement that trousers made could somehow be turned into a fashion statement. I studied the outfit she was wearing and sighed. It seemed unlikely.

  Verdana pointed to my face, scrunching up hers in deliberate mimicry.

  She patted me on the top of my head as if I were a pet dog who’d successfully retrieved a bone. I yanked my head away from her hand. I was nothing more than her accessory, both onstage and off. She might be the “voice of the independent woman,” but she was treating me no differently than a man would.