The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  Lavelle turned to her, his face tense and angry at what they were witnessing. ‘We should leave here, Ellen,’ he said.

  He was right. The last thing they wanted was trouble. And what she was now seeing, what disgusted and horrified her, was trouble. This was Boston’s ‘Orange welcome’ that she had been warned about in Quebec.

  As they turned to make their way out of the crowd, they heard other, different music. For a moment the mob fell silent, their only voice the crackling of the avenging flames which licked at the breasts of the Whore of Babylon.

  “It’s the Irish!’ Ellen said to Lavelle as the whistles and fiddles of the approaching group broke into a rollicking reel.

  ‘It’s the Irish!’ the crowd shouted, echoing Ellen’s words.

  As cobblestones and bricks rained down on them, the Orange band started up again. Then, on the streets of Boston the music of the two rival cultures played it out. Note for note they traded with each other, as their supporters traded blow for blow – re-enacting, it seemed to Ellen, the bloody battle of a century and a half ago.

  ‘Sinn féin, sinn féin,’ she said to Lavelle as they made away from the melee. ‘Ourselves are ourselves,’ she repeated in English. ‘We love a good fight.’

  ‘It seems it’s the only way we’ll get anywhere,’ he replied. ‘There may be more of us, but somehow we’re always at the bottom of the heap – both here and at home.’

  ‘Do you think it will ever change?’

  ‘Only if we change.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she asked.

  ‘We have to adopt new ways, forget about the old language, the old tunes and stories of the old country. The Irish need to stick together, help each other and get into positions of power – into politics.’

  ‘The French-Canadians in Quebec didn’t give up their language and culture, and they’ve survived. Why should we?’ she challenged him.

  ‘But Quebec is Catholic – that’s the difference!’ he said. ‘The Catholics have the power there – not the English Protestants.’

  ‘Why is it always down to religion? If you scrape away everything else – it’s always religion!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘God doesn’t rule the world – religion does!’

  And she remembered a saying the Máistir had when he spoke of such things: Is olc an iomarca creidimh! – ‘Too much religion is a bad thing’ – and she wondered about the wisdom of bringing the children here.

  There must have been over a hundred newspapers and periodicals printed regularly in Boston. In the early winter days, Ellen devoured as many as she could lay hands on, wanting to learn as much as she could about the city – past and future.

  She learned how the Bostonians had built up their seaboard city trading with far-away places. How its whaling fleet combed the waters of the world for the great leviathans of the deep. How the rapidly expanding clothing industry would be revolutionized by the invention of Howe’s sewing machine in the adjoining town, Cambridge, the previous year.

  She gleaned every scrap of information the newspapers could provide about this New England where she would raise her children.

  Yes, she would still bring them here, but she would shelter them, educate them, lift them above all of the horrors of Pope’s Night and for what it stood.

  Wine!

  She had discussed the idea many times with Lavelle during the long journey from Australia and while she recuperated at the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec.

  At first he was slow to warm to the idea, thinking the importing of wine to be too sedate a business for him. But in Quebec, while she was ill, he had taken the trouble to wander the city. He was surprised to find the stores so well-stocked with a variety of French wines.

  When he then saw the size of Boston and its wealth, this convinced him further. Besides, the idea of laying railroad tracks – hammering steel in the mid-Western sun – did not appeal to him greatly. He knew something about wine from his time at Crockford’s, and so did she. It would be interesting, he thought, to pit themselves against Boston’s business brethren.

  ‘Wine is the only thing I know anything about,’ she said, ‘apart from picking praties and gathering turf, and I don’t see too many lazy beds, or bogs either, around Beacon Hill!’

  ‘No,’ Lavelle replied, ‘and no grapes are grown on Beacon Hill either.’

  Previously she had told him that the proceeds from the sale of the Ngarrindjeri gold were ‘as much yours as mine’. He had resisted, saying she should take the money and go back to Ireland.

  ‘I can’t go as yet, Lavelle. It’s too soon, I must first establish something here that I can bring the children back to, else there’s no point me going to Ireland,’ she had answered him. ‘For what would I do if we stayed in Ireland? Become a trader making profit out of those starving? Buy a parcel of land and have to keep the dying out of it? Ireland has no future for me – only to take my children and get out of it. I’ve decided on Boston.’

  Now they had to get busy.

  ‘We will get French wine from Quebec to start with. Then maybe from France itself, when we are established. The Irish Earls fled there after the Battle of Kinsale, and set up in Bordeaux. Chevalier told me about them – he used to call them “the Wine Geese”!’

  ‘Well, if all else fails, we could always import some of Crockford’s Gold!’ he said, laughing.

  ‘It’s a warehouse not a whorehouse we’re letting!’ Ellen was told when she first set about trying to secure premises for their wine business.

  Lavelle was faring no better: ‘Can’t you Irish read? “Positively no Irish need apply”. “Positively” means “at all, at all” in your manner of speaking!’

  But eventually, after countless refusals, they found a small warehouse to rent not far off the Long Wharf. It was expensive, being so close to the waterfront – and, being Irish, they had to pay an additional bond above the asking price – but they thought it the place to be.

  They cleaned out the disused warehouse. Lavelle started making trestles and shelving. She hired a tradesman to put up the name outside in bold lettering: THE NEW ENGLAND WINE COMPANY – IMPORTERS OF FINE WINES, PORTS AND LIQUEURS. Ellen was pleased with that. She would play them at their own game. Think like them. Be one of them.

  One day she came into the building, all excited, waving a letter at him, her hair streaming behind her.

  ‘Lavelle! Lavelle! Look – it’s from Father McGauran. He has found us a supplier in Québec: Frontignac, Père et Fils, importers from Burgundy and Bordeaux. Isn’t it great news? Now Boston will drink our wine!’

  So thrilled was she, that before either of them knew it, she had thrown her arms round his neck.

  It was the first time they had touched since he had sat beside her bed in the Hôtel-Dieu, trying to soothe her as she wrestled with the torments of the fever. Now, he could smell her sweetness, feel the flush of her cheeks against his, her hair straying into his nose and mouth.

  ‘I’m so happy for you, Ellen. You go at life so hard.’

  He held her there, a little longer than the moment required. She felt him against her breast, the slight insistence in his arms, knew she had to break this, regretted that her spontaneity had placed them both in this situation.

  ‘Thanks, Lavelle,’ she said, lifting her head away from him. ‘I knew we’d succeed – now all we have to do is get it here and sell it. And we will!’ she said, more flushed than she had been before.

  He let go of her slowly. Fighting the urge to pull her back to him, tell her how much he admired her, wanted it all to work out for her … To hell with it! Just to tell her he loved her.

  She must have sensed something in him, because she looked away, then started reading Father McGauran’s letter out loud:

  ‘Grosse Île is now closed for the winter. Over ninety thousand came in all this summer, the highest number of any year yet. Many did not survive the crossing. Many more found their last resting place in the “Irish” Cemetery. Dr Douglas and his staff
have saved many too, who otherwise, would have perished. The orphans also prosper with their new families …’

  She was pleased with news of the orphans.

  On 7 November 1847, Isabella Morgan Moore, caring Christian, loving wife, and mother of two young children, died of typhus.

  Moore was devastated. Isabella had been his strength, his confidante after the untimely death of his first wife, Hannah, seven years ago. Isabella had regard for the two children of his marriage to Hannah as if they were her own, with an especial affection for her namesake, little Isabella. Like Hannah, she had borne him two children, and, like Hannah, Isabella had had an enriching and nurturing effect on him.

  He had been twice blest in the fairest of creatures in God’s dominion. Yet twice the Lord had taken away what he had bestowed, after less than five years of happiness in each case. Stricken them both with typhus.

  Always crossings between lives … connections … Moore thought sadly.

  Three weeks later, the New England Wine Company received their first consignment of vin supérieur de France from Frontignac, Père et Fils, Quebec.

  ‘The Christmas should give us a good start,’ Ellen said to Lavelle.

  She had been excited when the crates arrived: checking them off against the consignment notice, seeing the words for the first time – saying them aloud: ‘Twelve crates of Burgundy, twelve crates of Bordeaux, two of Hennessy.’

  Selling them was a different matter, though.

  There was a strong temperance movement in Boston, and the Catholic Church had spoken out against ‘the fruit of the bewitching glass’. About the only thing it and the Protestant Church held in common was a denouncement of the demon drink.

  Drink, intemperance, intoxication were all evils Bostonians associated with the Irish. It was said that Boston had a thousand groggeries, pubs, and bars – a good proportion of which resided in the Irish neighbourhoods of Fort Hill and the North End. The Irish groggeries, however, were not the intended market for Ellen and Lavelle’s fine wines.

  Armed with samples of their newly arrived merchandise, and in positive spirits at the thought of making their first sales, Ellen left the Long Wharf and walked up State Street with its banks and large trading houses. Tapscott’s was here – ‘Mici Maol’s Bank’, as she called it. To the left then was the Merchants Exchange with its high Grecian pilasters. Ahead, with the British unicorn atop it, was the Old State Meeting House where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud to Bostonians.

  This area would be their market. This was where the money was.

  During their first few days in Boston, she and Lavelle had scouted the area and decided that Pendleton’s, on the corner of Washington Street, looked promising. The exterior walls were painted with signs proclaiming: ‘Gourmet Foods. Tobacco. Liquors. Wines.’

  Tall, angular and anxious, Ezra Pendleton took in the handsome well-dressed woman who entered his emporium. With a quick glance at his reflection in the side window on to Washington Street, he moved towards her in greeting. Business had been good of late and Pendleton looked forward to a continuation of that state of affairs, especially when he saw customers with such potential as this one had.

  Pleasantries having been exchanged, Pendleton was less sure of his new customer. She was Irish, obviously, although not from the lowest orders of that race which afflicted his city in their thousands. His taxes had been increased to fund hospitals and asylums for them, and – even more unpalatable to him – schools in which to educate their filthy offspring. However, none of these thoughts seeped through the quiet effusiveness of Ezra Pendleton.

  ‘What service can the house of Pendleton be to madam today?’

  Ellen noticed how sallow of complexion the man was; waxen, like his moustache. The thumb of his right hand found the inside of the revers of his dark coat. Ezra Pendleton seemed to be glad he had something to hold on to.

  ‘Would the house of Pendleton be interested in purchasing some fine imported French wines and brandies?’ Ellen asked pleasantly.

  This seemed to surprise the man. She watched his other hand find and finger his top buttonhole.

  ‘We are importers – the New England Wine Company.’ It made her nervous to say out the name like that for the first time.

  ‘Oh, yes. Quite!’ the merchant said, still completely taken aback by Ellen’s question. ‘But you are … Irish,’ he said, his comprehension fumbling along with his fingers, trying to make some sense out of this ridiculous situation.

  ‘Yes,’ Ellen said, raising her eyebrows to him. ‘Irish.’

  ‘But how … I mean, where …?’

  ‘From our suppliers. We have a licence to trade,’ Ellen answered the unformed question.

  Jumped-up Irish are almost worse than the ones who have nothing, Pendleton thought to himself. There should be laws confining them to the factories and the railroads. Selling wine, indeed! He would give her short enough shrift, with her wine.

  ‘I am sorry, madam, but we have our regular suppliers proven quality and delivery. In any event, we are completely over-stocked for the Yuletide!’

  Though his true thoughts remained unspoken, Ellen could read them in Pendleton’s eyes. The disdain at having to deal with her, even to talk to her.

  ‘At least look at the samples I have with me,’ she said, sorry almost immediately to have given him another opportunity for refusal.

  ‘I see no point, madam. Good day to you.’

  Without removing his hands, both now firmly clasped below the lapels of his coat, Pendleton ushered her back out on to the street.

  And so it was at Endecott’s, and at Sheldon &Seaward’s on Faneuil Hall Square. At least Mr Sheldon, with some semblance of humanity, had explained to her: ‘Were my clientele to become aware that I was buying from Irish Catholics, they would boycott us, take all their business to Pendleton’s or Endecott’s. I just could not risk it, madam – for the sake of the business. I do hope you understand.’

  Ellen did understand. There was an in-built distrust of her because she was Irish. What she had to sell was tainted by this distrust – they seemed to think that if the Irish were involved it had to be illicit!

  But there had to be somebody in Boston who’d buy her wines and brandies. She would just have to find that person – and she would.

  The minute she saw him, Ellen knew that Jacob Peabody was both a skinflint and a lecher – and their best hope yet.

  Peabody’s was on South Market Street across from Quincy Market. The Market itself was constructed in a nouveau-Grecian style of architecture out of granite. A covered walkway connected the upper floors of Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. Above this on the Hall’s domed cupola perched Boston’s famous weather-vane – the copper grasshopper which Jacob Peabody liked to keep an eye on when business was slow enough to permit it.

  The proprietor of Peabody’s did not walk to meet his most recent customer, Ellen noticed. He glided towards her, hand outstretched, white hair down to his collar, white eyebrows raised. Below the eyebrows, his canny eyes glinted as he studied the red-haired woman. He held her hand, lingering over it, rubbing his index finger along the soft flesh of her Mount of Venus.

  ‘Delighted, delighted, Mrs O’Malley!’ he said with relish when she introduced herself.

  ‘Mr Peabody!’ she said, withdrawing her hand. The old buachaill didn’t even try to hide it – wasn’t afraid of himself like Pendleton.

  ‘Mr Peabody,’ she stated matter-of-factly, ‘I am Irish, a Catholic …’

  Peabody listened, his eyes not straying from her mouth, watching her lips form the words.

  ‘The wine and the brandy, is French, superior, absolutely legal …’ she paused, and decided to say it anyway. ‘Yes, despite being papists, my partner and I managed to get a licence.’

  She had decided to be blunt with this Mr Peabody, put it up to him.

  ‘The price, Mrs O’Malley – the price?’ Jacob Peabody pushed his lips out.

  His equally blunt rea
ction caught her off guard. There was no polite side-shunting with Mr Peabody. Profit not Popes was what Jacob Peabody was interested in, and younger women.

  She hesitated momentarily in her reply.

  ‘Why should I buy from you?’ he went on, watching her hawk-like. ‘Untried, untrusted, unorthodox of your gender. You may not survive in the tough world of business, and then where is Jacob Peabody?’ He watched her response, but she kept his gaze, unwavering, waiting until he was finished. ‘My friends would say I ruined myself for the smile of an Irish beauty. Laugh me out of the Market they would!’ He laughed himself at the idea of this. ‘The price, Mrs O’Malley – the price?’

  She liked him, this Peabody. He didn’t put a tooth in anything. An idea was beginning to form in her head – but could she trust him? Her instinct said yes. She would have to keep an eye on him, and keep his hands off of her, but yes, she could handle him.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Mr Peabody,’ she began. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you on which you can’t lose.’

  ‘Oh, ho!’ he laughed, his eyes lighting up even more. ‘I’ve heard all that before – “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” Old Papa Peabody used to say. I suspect it applies to the Irish as well, but I’m listening, Mrs O’Malley. Jacob Peabody is listening.’

  ‘This is my offer,’ she started: ‘I will supply you, Mr Peabody, with the finest of French wines and brandy at cost price, taking no profit. And you will not have to pay me until you have sold them.’

  Peabody’s eyes narrowed, watching her, waiting for the sting.

  ‘But when you have sold them,’ Ellen continued, ‘you must split the profit with me. Then I will immediately replace the items sold.’

  Jacob Peabody laughed. ‘I’ve never heard the likes of it! Are you sure, Mrs O’Malley, you’re not Jewish instead of Irish? Old Papa Peabody would have been proud of you!’

  She was a risk-taker this Irish woman – like himself. You had to be if you were an outsider in Boston. He was still an outsider, he knew, even though he was now second-generation Bostonian. Even after his smart old papa had changed the family name to Peabody.