by Kirby Larson
“Another Mrs. Bliven?”
Ruby managed to get the latches and pushed herself to her feet again. “I do wish we could chat longer, Hattie. But I’m in a bit of a rush.”
I wanted to say something that would make a crack in Ruby’s hardened, selfish heart. But to find such words would mean understanding how her mind worked, and I never wanted to lower myself to that. Never. I stormed across the room and grabbed Uncle Chester’s books, somehow comforted by his refusal to cross a line.
“Good-bye, Hattie,” she called after me, as cheerily as if she hadn’t stolen my money and broken my heart.
I did not respond.
My hand trembled so that I missed the elevator button several times before connecting with it. I cradled Uncle Chester’s books close on the ride down, rocking in place and praying for the strength to get back to my room at the hotel.
When the elevator door slid open, there was Mr. Gignac. I was not surprised to see him. I clutched the books closer to my chest. “These were my uncle’s,” I said.
“Of course.” He held open the grated door so I could step out. “Madame is at home?”
I nodded. Then I noticed the two policemen in the lobby. My eyes snapped back to Mr. Gignac.
“I hope you have made your good-byes,” he said. “Madame Danvers will be—how to say it?—unavailable for quite some time.”
I made two telephone calls when I got back to the hotel. The first was to Gill; Ruby’s story was going to be all over the papers sooner or later. He appreciated the tip. I also spoke to Marjorie and told her everything. “Take tomorrow off, kid,” she advised. “We’ve got it covered here.”
“I’ll be in,” I said. What good would it do to sit around and mope?
But mope was exactly what I did. All the rest of that awful day and into the night. I wallowed in misery on the bed, Uncle Chester’s books scattered around me. Losing the homestead was one thing. That had been devastating, but not even the savviest farmer could survive a hailstorm at harvest. When I had surveyed the scene of my ruined crops—my ruined dreams—I’d thought I was seeing the worst I would ever see. But that was before Ruby Danvers.
She had said I would thank her someday for teaching me that life was about holding back, even holding back your own true self at times. In Ruby Danvers’ dictionary, I was the prime example of a fool.
From my prone position on the bed, I could see my bouquet of feathers. The feathers I’d thought would symbolize my flight into a new life. Could I have been any more naive? Any more stupid? Hardly.
A thunderous clap of anger sounded inside me and I jumped out of bed, grabbed the feathers, ran to the window, and wrestled it open. “I hate you, Uncle Chester!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Thanks for nothing!” One by one, I let each feather in my collection drift from my hand out the window and to the street below to be trod upon by dozens of uncaring souls.
I threw myself back on the bed. So much for dreams. I had thought that learning about Uncle Chester would help me know myself somehow. All these months in the big city and I was no wiser than one of Rooster Jim’s chickens.
In frustration, I shoved all of Uncle Chester’s books to the floor, rolled onto my stomach, and pounded the mattress like a toddler throwing a tantrum. With a final punch to my pillow, I fell back, my left cheek resting on a cool spot on the sheet. In my direct line of sight, I saw the feather with the pink shaft. The one that led me to unravel Ruby’s deception. On the floor, right next to the desk. It must’ve gotten blown back inside when I threw the other feathers out the window.
I pushed myself out of bed and snatched it up, ready to fling it outside, too.
Then something stopped me. A papery whisper like those I’d heard in the morgue all those times. Not words, but a sense of words: She is wrong. She is wrong.
She is wrong.
I did not believe in hocus-pocus, but every bit of me believed that Uncle Chester was trying to help me one last time. Trying to help me see that Ruby had it crossways. I brushed that feather against my hot cheek.
If trusting others was foolish, well, much better to be a fool. If you didn’t trust, didn’t open your heart up to people, to one special person, that was what made you a failure. Not a summer hailstorm. Not a homestead left behind. Not a huckster in the form of a false friend.
I curled up on the chair by the window, looking out at the stars blinking bright and brave, absorbing their light and promise. Then I crawled into bed and said my prayers, closing with, “And God bless Uncle Chester. Amen.”
Taking Pen in Hand
“ ‘Of course, she didn’t seem like a criminal,’ explained Lucien Gignac. ‘That’s because she was very good at what she did.’ ”
—from Inside the Female Criminal Mind,
by Gill Short
It turned out that despite neither of us having ever seen her, Mr. Wilkes and I had both been contributing to the imaginary Pearl’s health improvement fund; he, understandably, at a much higher rate than I. When he learned of my situation, he telephoned to offer to replenish my Pond’s Cold Cream jar, but as it had been drained through no fault of his, I couldn’t accept that kind offer. I did, however, accept an invitation to be his guest when the great reporter Ida Tarbell spoke to the San Francisco Club. To my mind, that was the better part of the bargain. Miss Tarbell’s closing words, “Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists—with it all things are possible,” not only thrilled me, they propelled me to action.
Miss D’Lacorte proved to be a trusty confidante when I approached her the morning after Miss Tarbell’s speech. I showed her the letter I’d composed, and she approved. “Looks like you’ll need a recommendation from me to C. B. Blethen,” she said.
“You don’t know what the answer will be,” I pointed out.
“Oh, there can only be one answer to correspondence like that.” She hit the carriage return on her typewriter with a flourish. “If you don’t get a yes, I’ll eat Gill’s ridiculous new tie.” We both grinned at Gill’s bemused expression.
With that vote of confidence, I sealed up the envelope containing one concise letter and one delicate object, pasted on a stamp, and headed to the post office, dodging Mr. Monson, who was no doubt bearing down on me with another gloves-and-gown assignment. “I’ll be back in a jiff,” I told him. His response was to chomp harder on that ever-present cigar.
I had my reply in less than two weeks. With trembling hands, I opened it and began to read.
October 23, 1919
Dear Hattie,
I am in receipt of your letter, and the colorful feather tucked inside, though am perplexed about its significance. As for the letter itself, it seems that the women’s suffrage cause has done more than bestow upon the weaker sex the right to vote. Apparently, it now gives women the right to make proposals of marriage. What next? I shudder to think. It is a thoroughly disturbing chain of events.
I am sorry, but there is only one action I can take. And that is to paste said letter into a scrapbook. That way, I will have proof for our grandchildren that their grandmother was always a brazen woman.
As for your worries about not setting a date too soon: I have loved you since I was fifteen and don’t see that state of affairs changing, whether there is a ring on your finger or not.
Yours. Always.
Charlie
P. S. Mr. Boeing was pleased to learn I would be staying in Seattle.
Till Niagara Falls
September 6, 1923
Dear Perilee,
I felt as fetching as a magazine model in the traveling suit you made me. Charlie said I was the prettiest girl on the train. But isn’t that what any new husband would say? And wasn’t it sweet of Mr. Blethen to see his ace reporter off on her honeymoon?
I don’t know what will be the bigger adventure: this cross-country trip or making a home with Charlie in Seattle. Home. Simply writing this word makes me feel like I’m blanketed, safe and warm, under one of your quilts. As big as I d
reamed on the Montana prairie, I never dreamed that Miss Hattie Here-and-There would ever find such a home, and one so solidly built, not only with planks and stone, but with the hearts of those who love her. It’s been quite the journey from orphan homesteader to married reporter, and I could not have managed without help from so many, including one scoundrel uncle and a strudel-baking friend. You know it galls me to do so, but I am compelled to agree with Aunt Ivy on this point: the Lord does work in the most mysterious ways.
I must stop now. We are getting out to stretch our legs at Glacier Park, and I want to pop this in the mail.
Yours till Niagara Falls!
Hattie Inez Brooks Hawley
Acknowledgments
Mine might be the only name on the front cover, but I depend on the kindness of strangers to make a book like this happen, including aviation buffs Roger Cain, Howard “Ace” Campbell, and Bill Larkins; David Coscia, archive director, Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society; Paula Becker, staff historian, and all the amazing history hot shots at historylink.org, who keep Washington state’s past alive and lively; Sharon Levin, who polled her writer/historian friends for an idea for a San Francisco scandal circa 1915; Ellen Keremitsis, reference staff, North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society; Mimi MacLeod and Bob Maxwell, who helped me understand those fire-breathing dragons called linotype machines; and Bill Sornsin at the Great Northern Railway Historical Society, for train schedules and routes. Tami J. Suzuki, librarian at the Daniel E. Koshland San Francisco History Center of the San Francisco Public Library, introduced me to San Francisco Chronicle librarian Bill Van Niekerken, who pointed me toward the invaluable Journalism in California by John P. Young; Tom Carey, at the San Francisco History Center, helped verify that the Hyde Street cable car on this book’s cover would indeed have been running during Hattie’s time in the City by the Bay; Thom Hindle, camera historian, gave me the brand name of Flash Finnegan’s camera; and the very efficient, knowledgeable, and generous Lew Baer, editor of the San Francisco Bay Area Post Card Club, authenticated dates of the cards included in this book. The postcard in Chapter 10 appears courtesy of Lew from his private collection. I am also grateful to every research librarian who cheerfully answered my crazy and never-ending questions. Blessings on you all for extending a hand to a writer in need.
Profound thanks to my editor, Michelle Poploff, for saving me from countless literary embarrassments, and to her assistant, Rebecca Short, both of whom believed I could actually finish this book (though some months later than promised), and my agent, Jill Grinberg, who is a whole lot of fun in addition to being one very sharp cookie. I owe a glass of wine to Karen Cushman and Barbara O’Connor (my “old broads who don’t do vampires” buds) and Jenni Holm and Cynthia Lord, all of whom comforted, commiserated, and occasionally cajoled each time I hit the wall. Nothing I write happens without Mary Nethery, who never wearies of reminding me that plot is always a good addition to any novel. My husband, Neil, and Winston the Wonder Dog spent many hours listening to me talk out this story on our daily walks. Neil: for a CPA, you really know how to think outside the boxes.
This book would not exist without the women who made headlines, like Nellie Bly and Ida Tarbell, and the women who deserved to, including some of my relations. The more I read, the more I realize our foremothers kicked butt, and it’s a crying shame that too few of their stories are out there.
Author’s Note
When I left Hattie at the end of Hattie Big Sky, I had no intention of writing another book about her. But so many readers have emailed or written to find out what happened next—I was even once collared in the grocery store!—that I began to wonder about it myself.
I initially envisioned Hattie taking a road trip, a concept inspired by the delightful book Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West by Joanne Wilke. Trust me, I tried to send Hattie on the road, but she dug in her heels. It turns out that all of those Honyocker’s Homilies gave her the writing bug, big-time. She wanted to be a reporter and needed to get to a newspaper, not behind the wheel of a Model T.
When I taught writing, I used to promise my students that their first draft would contain everything they needed to complete a story. Though it is certainly not a first draft, rereading Hattie Big Sky brought that home to me in the guise of an uncle who’d called himself a scoundrel. Many books start with a writer asking “What if?” So I asked myself, “What if Hattie set out to solve the mystery of Uncle Chester’s life?” He’d gone to Montana from somewhere else, but where? When I realized he could have been in San Francisco around the time of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, I knew that was where Hattie was going to end up. A chance encounter with an article about love tokens fashioned from old coins (learn more at lovetokensociety.com) paved the way for Ruby Danvers and a delicious dilemma for Hattie.
Being the prima donna that she is, “Empress of Emotion” Vera Clare swept to the center stage of this novel early on. She initially garnered a starring role, and is not pleased that most of her story ended up in a computer file labeled “deleted scenes.” Though vaudeville was waning by the 1920s (it couldn’t compete with films), that traveling troupe lifestyle seemed the perfect vehicle for transporting Hattie from Montana to California. Issues of Theater magazine from 1919 educated me about Hamlet traps, second boys, and other theater lore and terms.
Historic San Francisco came alive for me through three resources: my treasured copy of the 1921 edition of The New World Atlas and Gazetteer, published by P. F. Colliers and Sons, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890–1915 by Jessica Ellen Sewell, and the 1919 Crocker-Langley San Francisco directory, which is where I found the listings for the Hotel Cortez, Clinton’s Cafeteria, and Praeger’s department store. These books helped me confidently move Hattie around town. Places like the Fairmont Hotel and Lotta’s Fountain still exist; you can visit them yourself. The Chronicle Building is privately owned but still standing and ready for a photo op. And that famous Golden Gate Bridge? Hattie never saw it. (In Chapter 11, Hattie flies over the Golden Gate channel.) Construction on the bridge didn’t begin until 1933, fourteen years after she lived in San Francisco.
If you wonder what life was like for early women reporters, do read Bylines: A Photobiography of Nellie Bly by Sue Macy and Ida Tarbell: Pioneer Investigative Reporter by Barbara A. Sommervill. To further satisfy your craving for newsprint, check your local library’s online database to see if you can access the historic New York Times. Besides learning the news and opinions of a particular time period, you can also sleuth out business names and locations, as well as prices of food and clothing. The Times is where I found out that Campbell’s made twenty-one varieties of soup in 1919, each selling for twelve cents a can. And the room in which Hattie heated all those cans of soup on a hot plate would have cost $2.50 a week, a detail I uncovered by reading old classified ads in the San Francisco Chronicle—the same paper Hattie worked for. Warning: Reading old newspapers is addictive!
One of the things that struck me as I read the newspapers from 1915 to 1920 was the number of reports of people taking advantage of others. This time period is sometimes called the Golden Age of the Con, and now I know why. Whether it was a crooked card game, a scam to sell fake souvenirs from the Panama Pacific International Exposition, or a bad check, there was at least one reference to crime and corruption in every issue I read. In some ways, that more innocent age made it easier for crooks. Information traveled slowly, and this was well before the days of any CSI units. In addition, banking practices like making blank counter checks available to department stores (see Chapter 5) provided opportunity to cheaters who merely had to write fake account numbers on those counter checks. There really was a Cassie Chadwick, whom I encountered in The Incredible Mrs. Chadwick: The Most Notorious Woman of Her Age by John S. Crosbie, and she is the inspiration for Ruby Danvers. The con Ruby tried to pull on Mrs. Bliven is based on one I read about in the pages of the Chronicle.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am a compulsive researcher, working hard to bring the past alive accurately. (That doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes; I ask forgiveness in advance for any glitches you discover.) Favorite investigative techniques include studying old newspapers and atlases, and reading personal journals and accounts. I even browse eBay for photos, letters, and postcards—anything to help me understand a particular era. Like Hattie, I have been known to disappear in dusty archives and newspaper morgues. But this book in your hands is a work of historical fiction. In order to give Hattie a compelling story to wander around in, I did juggle some facts.
For example, to my knowledge, the pilot Eddie Hubbard never gave flying demonstrations in San Francisco. Nor does it appear that there were any civilian seaplanes taking off from the Presidio’s Flying Field during Hattie’s time there. But the opera great Luisa Tetrazzini did indeed hire Eddie to give her a flight-seeing tour of the city of Seattle. As described in Hattie Ever After, the cool air was deemed harmful to the Florentine Nightingale’s voice, so a woman reporter, Hazel Archibald (writing as Dora Dean), took her place in the passenger compartment of Eddie’s seaplane. The lead of Hattie’s article about her adventure is taken directly from Dora/Hazel’s own words in the Seattle Times on January 2, 1920.
President Wilson did undertake a grueling tour around the country to win popular support for the League of Nations, a course of action that exacted a huge physical toll. He collapsed in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25, 1919, and on October 2 he suffered a terrible stroke. There is no record of his getting stuck in an elevator during his San Francisco stop (he actually stayed at the St. Francis, not the Fairmont). That incident was fabricated to give Hattie a juicy scoop.
It is unlikely that Hattie would have been able to repay Uncle Chester’s four-hundred-dollar IOU as quickly as she did. In 1920, a professional baseball player earned about five thousand dollars a year. The average male office worker’s annual income was about twelve hundred dollars; female office workers made considerably less, around eight or nine hundred. For the sake of the story, I beefed up Hattie’s earning power to pay off the debt sooner.