Stories from Suffragette City

by M. J. Rose

  “I think we need to discuss that, Grace,” he said in all earnestness.

  “What do you mean?” She put down the fork. She was suddenly on high alert, hearing something in her uncle’s voice that made her very nervous.

  Katrina watched the little girl start to worry her thumbnail with the pad of her forefinger, her tell when she sensed trouble.

  “I think it would be much more fun for you and Nanny to come to my office instead of getting all tired and dirty at the march. We can sit in the window seat and watch it all as it goes by.”

  Grace’s lips quivered. She looked over at her aunt. Katrina could see the little girl was about to cry. And she couldn’t have that. It made Katrina remember when she’d been a bit younger than Grace and her mother had died. Her aunt had come to Katrina’s bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed and told Katrina she had some bad news and was going to need her to be a big girl and not cry. But Katrina hadn’t been able to swallow her grief.

  “I think your uncle has come up with a grand idea. You can have a party at his office with Tribly. Hot chocolate and cakes. And you can stand at the window and wave at me and all the grown-ups and…” She was trying as hard as she could to come up with more, and then she hit on it. The perfect idea. “And if you promise to be careful with it, I will give you my Brownie camera! And you can be the parade’s official photographer, which is much more important than marching. Would you like that?”

  “Your Brownie?” Grace asked in astonishment.

  Katrina nodded with all the solemnity the moment allowed.

  Grace was obsessed with the camera. When she first arrived and saw it, she’d begged Katrina to teach her how to use it. She’d broken it the second time she’d tried and had been inconsolable. Katrina had bought a new one and had been giving her lessons ever since. As good as Grace was at sewing, she was even better at photography. Even at her young age, she had shown a very sophisticated eye for framing.

  Now Katrina watched her niece’s expression go from sorrow to elation. “The official photographer for the parade?” Then she scrunched up her forehead. “What does that mean?”

  “Sit down and while we eat, I can explain.”

  Grace did as she was told, and Katrina described what “official photographer” meant and what Grace’s obligations would be if she accepted the job. Which the child did with delight. Over her cup, Katrina glanced at Charles, who was reading the morning paper, having divorced himself from the conversation now that he had gotten his way. He always expected to win and was petulant when he didn’t.

  Theirs wasn’t the ideal marriage she’d envisioned when at twenty-five she had fallen in love with a man three years her junior who’d been more taken with her for her accomplishments than her looks. It had been quite the scandal that she was older and involved in the suffrage movement. She’d expected the gossip to bother him more. But if anything he’d seemed to enjoy the shock of it all. As had she. She’d loved that they were flaunting propriety a bit. When he introduced her to friends and family, he always mentioned how much he admired Katrina’s gumption to go to college—his sisters had as well—and to have graduated with a double major. And to be taking up causes. But it seemed as if all that pride had turned to anger over what she was fighting for now. Was it his resentment that she had something she loved so much outside of their home? That she was fulfilled by the movement in a way he wasn’t by his work? And if it was, then he was being a spoiled child.

  She chided herself. It was unfair of her to judge him harshly. Charles was generous, thoughtful, and very kind. Like Katrina, he had lost his mother when he was very young. She at age five, he at six. They shared that heartache. Charles had grown up with six sisters and liked women in a way that not all men did. That endeared him to Katrina. It was part of his attraction. Unlike other men, he had never ignored what she had to say or thought less of an idea just because it had come from a woman.

  Charles also had to accept that he’d been the replacement to the firstborn Charles Lewis Tiffany, who had died as a baby.

  Katrina thought it cruel that her father-in-law had named his second son after his first. What a burden for a child to have. Katrina saw its ramifications. Charles wasn’t quite the son Louis had wanted. Not creative. Not an artist. Not capable of giving the Tiffany name an heir. Not someone who would change the world the way Louis had, or his father before him.

  All that frustration and the sense of being less than came out in ways that over time Katrina had come to dislike. She knew from her close friends that no marriage was immune to feelings of anger and even hatred. It was typical for a couple to get on each other’s nerves. But if you were lucky, as she was, respect and abiding love would get you through. Except for the last few years, his refusal to embrace the movement that she was devoting her life to was becoming a real obstacle in their union. He confounded her. Here was a man who adored women and cherished them and trusted them and looked to them for advice and yet clung to old-fashioned notions of protecting her.

  “So it’s settled, then,” Katrina said to Grace. “I’ll wave up at you in the window of Tiffany’s, and you’ll take my picture along with pictures of all the other women and men marching. It’s a very important job, but I’m convinced you’re going to do us proud. And maybe we can use one of your photographs in our next pamphlet.”

  Grace beamed, and Charles looked on, amused.

  “Well done, dear,” he said. Then he squinted and leaned closer to her. “Katrina, what is that pin on your lapel?”

  She reached up and touched the amethyst, peridot, and diamond butterfly pin she’d attached to her white shirtwaist. She could have waited to put it on at the march and prevented Charles from noticing it. But she prized honesty above all other virtues, even if it meant another row with her husband.

  Katrina had a few pieces of jewelry she’d been given as a young woman that had come from other stores. Upon her graduation from high school her stepmother and father had given her pearls from Bailey Banks & Biddle. When she’d graduated from college they’d presented her with a diamond watch from the same shop. But except for a few odds and ends she had inherited, all her pieces came from the Fifth Avenue store started in 1837 by her husband’s grandfather. And Charles didn’t recognize this one.

  “It’s a suffrage pin. Dr. Kunz helped us get them made. A dozen of us have them, and we’re all wearing them today.”

  “Dr. Kunz? Our Dr. Kunz? The head of the gemology department at Tiffany’s?”

  “Of course. Who else would we ask?”

  Charles shook his head. “This is really going too far, Katrina. Did you go behind my back and ask Dr. Kunz to do this for your group?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. I wouldn’t do that, Charles. Would I?”

  He looked almost sheepish except that was an attitude he never adopted. He wasn’t very good at admitting he was wrong, or apologizing. Something he’d clearly inherited, along with blue eyes and a strong, handsome face, from his father.

  “George Kunz is a member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage—”

  “Don’t remind me,” Charles interrupted.

  Katrina frowned. This was old ground and tiresome. “And among the members are the husbands of many women with whom I work, of which you are aware. Mrs. Belmont went to Dr. Kunz and asked him, and he was only too happy to help her create something symbolic. And what better than a butterfly—a symbol of metamorphosis and endurance. Butterflies prove that change is a beautiful thing.”

  “I love butterflies,” Grace chimed in. “There are so many at Laurelton. Grandpa planted all those butterfly bushes to make sure they’d come visit, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Katrina said. “They’re called Buddleia bushes.”

  Uninterested in the Latin name for the plant, Grace continued talking. “Grampa once told me a butterfly was a garden with wings. So is your pin a garden with wings, too?”

  Katrina nodded. That was so like her father-in-law to say. He lived to c
reate beauty and revered it. He’d used the symbol himself, in lamps as well as in freestanding stained glass butterflies and dragonflies that he hung from the windows and would give as small gifts, delighting everyone who received one.

  “I don’t know if I approve of Dr. Kunz creating Tiffany jewelry that is going to be associated with this radical movement.”

  “It’s too late, darling. Just like it’s too late for antiquated views about suffrage.” Harsh words but communicated softly, as was her style. “You know, you really are a complicated man. You met me—already a total radical, already committed to the movement, a college graduate scandalously three years your senior—and you married me. I told you I wasn’t going to change. And yet you’ve spent the last few years shaking your head as if you suddenly woke up and discovered I was a political creature determined to get women the vote. And we are going to get it, Charles, despite you and your friends who for God knows what reason are scared of us entering the voting booth.”

  “The reason is that there are spheres in which feelings should be paramount and kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme and those belong to women—”

  “Charles, don’t go quoting that ridiculous anti-suffrage nonsense suggesting men are the only ones capable of understanding politics. What is that phrase I keep hearing? Oh, yes, ‘politics degrades women more than women purify politics.’ Please, that’s not true any more than any of those other platitudes men keep circulating.”

  “Are you two fighting?” Grace asked in a very serious tone of voice.

  Katrina laughed and then Charles joined in.

  “Actually, yes, dear,” Katrina said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t love each other. Like when you and I fight over you not behaving.”

  “That’s what Mama says about her and Papa fighting, too.”

  “Because it’s true,” Katrina said.

  Beside her, Charles sighed. “I did know whom I was marrying, my dear. But I didn’t think that you’d devote yourself to this quite the way you have. Getting even more involved in it. I thought…” He broke off.

  Katrina put her hand over his, covering his wedding ring with her palm. They both had their disappointments. Of course he hadn’t expected her to get even more involved. They’d expected to start a family. Expected she’d have babies and become the mother she had been so desperate to become.

  At eleven o’clock, before Katrina left to go downtown and start helping prepare for the march, she stopped in on Grace and her nanny. Giving Tribly the Brownie camera, she instructed her on the plans for the rest of the day.

  She was to bring Grace and the camera to Mr. Tiffany’s office at three and remain there for at least an hour until Katrina and her group had walked under the window and Grace was able to take her photograph.

  “And I think since you have the camera, you should leave the dog at home,” Katrina said to Grace, who agreed.

  In the front hall of the brownstone on Thirty-Sixth Street, Katrina put on her hat and jacket, checked her reflection in the mirror, and went outside to the car and driver she’d ordered. Her destination, she told Miller, the chauffeur, was Washington Square West. But he might not be able to get all the way there due to certain streets being closed off because of the parade.

  Katrina had a good feeling about today. The excitement had been palpable for weeks. There had been dozens of marches in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other big cities since the movement had really taken off in the States in 1909. But the rumors were that this was going to be the biggest. As one of the organizers, she was anxious that everything go well. The mayor would be at the main reviewing stand, along with state officials. There would be other reviewing stands on the parade route for more dignitaries. There would be hecklers, too—angry men and even some angry women—who, much like her own husband, didn’t want things to change. Thousands of police would help control the crowds and keep the peace if in fact any altercations broke out. She hoped there would be no arrests and no one got hurt.

  In England, the movement had been much more violent. But Katrina, along with her fellow activists in America, had chosen to pursue a more peaceful path. So far it had mostly worked, but women were getting tired. Tired of the fact that since Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had begun this movement in 1852, it was still ongoing. Here they were in 1915, and they still had to protest and fight and explain and cajole. They still had to put up with archaic notions that women were second-class citizens, incapable of figuring out for whom to cast their vote. Or as Charles had said at breakfast, they were fragile and needed protecting. Fragile, my foot, Katrina thought, and gave a deep sigh.

  “Is everything all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Miller. I’m thinking about today.”

  “The missus is marching. She’s got all her gear. I helped her with her banner.”

  Katrina grinned. Miller’s wife was the family’s seamstress and a delightful woman. The couple had three young daughters, and Katrina spoiled them.

  “Thank you for being so supportive of our effort, Miller.”

  “Well, the way I look at it, I don’t want my little girls to grow up in an unfair world.”

  “You’re one of the enlightened ones,” she said, not voicing the rest of what she was thinking. That she didn’t know how her Yale-educated husband, who ran one of the most important stores in the country, where women made up the greatest number of customers, who had six sisters, who loved his wife with passion and devotion, couldn’t manage to open his mind the way their chauffeur had.

  Miller took several detours, but as Katrina had predicted, the closest he could get her to her destination was Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue. She didn’t mind walking, she told him, and thanked him as she got out and merged into the crowd.

  Katrina knew the map of where they were all to meet by heart. She’d helped organize it. Businesswomen were to congregate on West Thirteenth Street. Letter carriers’ wives on East Ninth. On West Eleventh near Fifth were the artists and actresses and dancers, architects, other occupational groups. Some meeting places were organized by profession, others by the clubs the women belonged to.

  Everywhere she looked women were dressed in white, carrying yellow or purple, green, and white banners. Some wore celluloid buttons. Others had pinned white feathers onto their hats. The feeling in the air was jovial, excited, and portentous.

  After ten minutes, Katrina joined the other members of the Woman Suffrage Party of New York. Almost everyone was there, many of them wearing George Kunz’s pins, the peridot and amethyst wings glittering in the sunlight.

  The march finally started with a surge at three in the afternoon. A lively brass band began playing, filling the air with the exciting sounds of trombones and trumpets. Katrina felt the drumbeat through the soles of her shoes, making its way up inside her until it reached the tips of her fingers. Her heart pounded to the rhythm.

  She felt her eyes fill up with tears as she passed underneath the arch at the north end of Washington Square Park and, arm in arm with her sisters, trekked up Fifth Avenue. She had been devoted to the cause her entire adult life. This was the moment she had been waiting for, and it was already spectacular. They had expected crowds, but what she was seeing heartened her. These were much bigger and grander than any she’d imagined. She couldn’t see the fronts of the buildings anymore. In some places, it looked like the spectators were eight or nine rows deep.

  Yes, there was something different about today. Maybe 1915 would be their year. Thirteen other states had already ratified and given the vote to women. Maybe this march, two weeks before the ballots were to be cast, would be what finally made the difference in her own beloved city.

  * * *

  At noon, Charles Tiffany’s secretary, Inez Goddard, knocked on his door. Because the store was open on Saturdays, Charles often came in for half a day and his secretary did as well. There were always jewelers on the premises, too, in case an important client had an emergency. Tiffany’s was known for its
customer service. Charles’s grandfather had prided himself on being available and satisfying every customer’s needs. Charles and his father knew that philosophy had helped build the store’s stellar reputation.

  “Dr. Kunz is here to see you, sir,” Inez said.

  When he’d arrived that morning, Charles had asked Inez to see if the chief gemologist was in the building. And if not, to put a call in to his home. It appeared she’d located him.

  “Please send him in.”

  George Kunz walked into the room. Right away Charles noticed the orange-and-black celluloid pin on the gemologist’s lapel. The words “Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage” encircled a three-petaled flower. Charles swallowed his sigh and greeted Dr. Kunz. At age fifty-nine, Dr. Kunz was a leader in his field and had been for more than twenty years.

  “Have a seat, George. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thank you, yes.” The white-bearded, white-haired man sat down easily. He exuded energy and curiosity.

  Charles had always liked him and felt a bit awkward about this encounter. Rising, he walked over to the bar in the corner of his office where Inez refreshed a silver urn with coffee several times each day. He filled two cups, splashed cream in both, and walked back to his desk, where he handed the gemologist a cup. Charles sat down across from one of the most revered members of the Tiffany’s firm and hesitated for a moment. He didn’t want to antagonize Dr. Kunz. Having worked side by side with Charles’s grandfather and then his father, Kunz was a part of the Tiffany’s legend. By the time he was a teenager, he had collected more than four thousand mineral specimens. He had even discovered a new gem in 1902, a lavender-pink gemstone that had been named after him, kunzite.

  “So, Charles, how can I help you?”

  “I’m … I was glad I caught you in.”

  “I’m only here for a few hours. I’m marching in the parade.”

  “Yes, yes. It’s about that, actually, that I wanted to talk to you. About this brooch you’ve made for some of the ladies in the movement.” He paused. Charles thought of Dr. Kunz as a member of his family, an uncle even. He’d known him his whole life. Dr. Kunz had been to his wedding. Charles had attended the gemologist’s wife’s funeral, as well as his granddaughter’s christening. They’d traveled together and argued politics before. But this conversation was sure to be more difficult.