by Clare Flynn
She slipped the coat off her shoulders and let him take it, standing beside her with it draped over his arms as he waited for the housekeeper to return. Eliza hesitated a moment, then deciding she must get it over with, she sat down, lifted her veil and eased the hat off her head.
He flung her coat aside onto a chair and moved across to kneel beside her. She looked at him and saw his eyes were misted.
‘My dearest lady, what has happened? Did you have an accident?’ He took her hands in his, but she pulled them away and shrank herself deeper into the armchair.
‘I was set upon by a stranger who stole my purse. There are parts of New York that are very dangerous and it happened soon after I arrived and before I understood which streets were safe and which not. I know you warned me so you have every right to say I told you so.’
‘Your teeth? Your poor face? Are you in pain? My dear, this is a terrible thing to have befallen you.’
‘The pain is gone now. I came here, doctor, to find out if you’re still prepared to offer me employment as your secretary. I’ve tried to find a teaching position in New York but no one wants to employ a woman whose face is likely to frighten the children. I used the last of your money to pay for the train ticket, so I will work without remuneration except food and board, until I have repaid you every last cent.’
He waved his hands in dismissal. ‘Never mind about that. We must get you to a dentist. We will purchase a new set of teeth for you. As beautiful as your own were.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I cannot accept more from you. When I’ve repaid you I will save up to buy some teeth and until then I will manage well enough without.’
He shook his head. ‘We will talk of it later, but I warn you, I am going to insist. Apart from anything else it will help my poor old German ears to hear you better. If you are to work for me it is essential that we can understand each other perfectly. Is that not right, Marta?’
The housekeeper was standing beside the table, laying out cups and saucers. She nodded and carried on with her task.
Dr Feigenbaum proved to be a man who, once his mind was made up, would brook no argument. The next morning he took Eliza in his carriage across town to the premises of a dental surgeon, Edward Larkman, who, after taking wax impressions of her remaining teeth, promised to fashion her a dental bridge before the end of the week. He told her that he used only real teeth, and those of the finest quality. The walls of his surgery were hung with certificates demonstrating that he had qualified as a dental doctor at the Baltimore College of Dentistry and that he had served as a dental officer in the Confederate army during the civil war.
‘I acquired an excellent collection of teeth from healthy but unfortunate young men who lost their lives in the war,’ he told Eliza in his slow southern drawl.
She didn’t want to know, but was powerless to stop him as he reminisced about his wartime experiences and the haul of teeth he had amassed at Harper’s Ferry.
‘No use to them when they’re dead. Y’all a lucky lady, Miss Hewlett. Just two missing and both from the bottom incisors. No one will be able to tell the new teeth apart from your own. Y’all soon get used to wearing them. Made a set for my wife last year and she says she don’t even notice she’s wearing them. I can see you brush your teeth regularly. Be surprised how few people do. The Union army didn’t even issue toothbrushes to their men. I may have fought on the losing side as an American citizen but I was on the winning side as a dentist.’
Eliza was relieved when she was able to leave, but uncomfortable about the prospect of having a dead man’s teeth in her mouth and horrified at the cost of the treatment.
When they were outside and in the carriage, she began to cry.
‘What is the trouble, my dear?’
‘I don’t know how long it will take me to repay you, Doctor. I am never going to be out of your debt.’
‘I have told you, I do not expect any repayment. It is my pleasure.’
‘No’ she said. ‘I can’t accept that. I intend to repay it all.’
The dental bridge, when it was fitted a few days later, was comfortable enough and she overcame her scruples about having a dead boy’s teeth in her mouth and began to appreciate the restoration of normal speech.
The dentist called her back as she was leaving the surgery.
‘If you ever want to get that face looked at, Ma’am, they’re doing fine things at the hospital here in St Louis. The surgeons here had plenty to practice on with fellows back from the war. I reckon one of those doctors might be able to make some improvements to the appearance of your face, with surgery. Seems a shame for such a fine-looking woman as you.’
Eliza shuddered at the thought of anyone operating on her face. She’d rather look the way she did. Why would she care anyway? Not now Jack wasn’t around to see her.
‘Or you might want to see Mr Pozzoni. He’s a hairdresser over on 6th Street, at the new Lindell Hotel. He has a bit of a sideline in face powders. Reckon he might be able to rustle one up for you that would help disguise that scar. And just to show what high quality products he makes I'm going to present you now with a free sample of his vegetable tooth powder, to keep those new teeth looking beautiful.’
Once Eliza got to grips with the hieroglyphics and frequent inkblots that characterised Dr Feigenbaum’s handwriting, she found that working for him was not arduous. In the mornings, while her employer took his daily constitutional in the nearby Lafayette Park, she ploughed her way through the backlog of his notes, transcribing them. They were in a mixture of German, French and English and consisted of a mixture of lengthy essays and short scribbled scraps. The pages were out of sequence – Dr Feigenbaum had been in the habit of sweeping them off his desk onto the floor in fits of impatience when he was trying to find a particular reference. He seemed oblivious to the fact that this was creating the very problem he was trying to solve. Eliza had no knowledge of either French or German, so she transcribed as best she could, with the help of the dictionaries in his study. The doctor’s intent was for the work itself to be written in English. In the afternoons, while he turned her transcribed notes into prose and chapters, she set up a system using index cards to keep track of topics, sources and themes for the eventual compilation of the book’s index and bibliography. She found she enjoyed the work and began to recognise frequently recurring words in French and German, writing a list of them each day which she memorised before going to sleep at night, after saying her prayers.
The content of Dr Feigenbaum’s book was a mixture of dull and arcane chemistry and only slightly less dreary explanations of brewing processes, mixed in with history and geography lessons on the development and spread of the brewing industry across Europe. Eliza found it strange that a medical doctor should make this his life’s work, and wondered why he hadn’t followed his father and brother into the brewing business. One day she plucked up the courage to ask him.
He looked up from his newspaper and smiled, evidently pleased that she had asked him a question of a personal nature.
‘My maternal grandfather was a medical practitioner and it was Mama’s wish that one of her sons pursue that profession. Papa was insistent that one of us join the family business and I was, I admit, a better student than Alphonsus, so it was decided that I would train to be a doctor and he a brewer. Growing up with the scent of fermenting hops in the air, it was hard to resist the desire to go into brewing myself but I was always the dutiful son.’
He gave a wry smile, as though ashamed of his own compliance to filial duty. ‘As a child I haunted the brewery, trailing after Papa as he tested the batches, riding out on the drays when the deliveries were made. I confess I have never felt the same excitement for general medical practice.’
Eliza smiled to herself. It was hard to imagine Dr Feigenbaum getting excited about anything. Almost as hard as it was to imagine him a small boy.
The doctor worked on in silence and Eliza began to relax more in his company, both of them quietly getting on w
ith their work, accompanied only by the ticking of the clock, the scratch of their pens and the crackling of the fire in the grate.
They fell into a steady routine. Every Wednesday afternoon and at weekends, Eliza was free to do as she wished. The doctor insisted that she took the time off and she was grateful to escape from the house and his presence. Mealtimes were awkward, with long silences. Eliza was unwilling to attempt to fill them herself so they sat at opposite ends of the table, staring down at their plates, as though the food that Frau Bauer served was a source of endless fascination.
The evenings were a trial, as her host expected her to join him in the parlour after supper. She would have preferred to spend the time with Marta Bauer in the kitchen, but the housekeeper, while courteous enough to Eliza, made it clear that she did not want to develop a friendship. This felt peculiar to Eliza as her own background was closer to the housekeeper’s than to the doctor’s. They were both employees and she was embarrassed that the doctor treated her in a different way from the older woman.
Every evening Dr Feigenbaum would read the St Louis newspaper and a local weekly magazine for the dominant German population of the city; Eliza sat by the fireside, occasionally sewing, regardless of her inadequacy at the task, determined to appear occupied; sometimes she would read – the only available reading matter being slim volumes of translated German poetry, a copy of Darwin’s On The Origin of The Species and a number of dictionaries. There was not even a bible in the house. In a city with a population heavily biased to German Catholics, Dr Feigenbaum informed her that he was an atheist, despite being born and raised as a Roman Catholic. Eliza was shocked but slightly thrilled by the idea and by the frank and unashamed way he told her.
One evening Dr Feigenbaum laid aside his newspaper and asked Eliza to read aloud to him. He handed her the poems of Josepf Von Eichendorff, translated into English.
She looked up in surprise. ‘This is an English translation.’
‘I know and love the poems well and would like you to experience them too. It would give me great pleasure to hear you read.’ He leaned forward, smiling encouragement.
She started to read, hesitantly at first, then moved by the lyricism of the poems, the gentleness, the quiet of them. They made her think of England, with their references to nature, to birds, to falling leaves, to the calm and quiet of evening. Feigenbaum listened, eyes closed, an expression of enchantment on his face.
She was reading a sad poem about autumn, enunciating the words carefully, trying to do justice to them, conscious that they probably fell short of the German original for him. Then her voice broke as she said the words “whoever loves me is far away”. She closed the book.
‘I’m sorry. My voice is tired. I think I will retire now, Doctor. Good night.’
He half rose from his chair, his face etched with sadness. She could feel his eyes following her as she left the room. She cursed her own stupidity.
On Sunday mornings she crossed the street with Frau Bauer to attend Mass at the German church. The language made little difference during the Mass itself as it was in Latin, but it meant that the sermon went entirely over her head. Once a fortnight she walked a couple of miles to the Irish church to make her confession to a priest who could understand her, but otherwise she enjoyed the anonymity of attending a church where everyone else spoke another language. England and Jack felt very far away.
One morning as she was leaving after the service, a young woman tapped her on the arm.
‘You’re staying with Dr Feigenbaum, aren’t you?’ The woman was about the same age as Eliza, smartly dressed and wearing a fashionable hat. She smiled and stretched out a hand. ‘I’m Helga Strauss.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Eliza hoped that her new dentures were not as obvious to the woman as they were to herself. Sometimes she felt as though if she spoke too quickly they might fall out. She was still wearing a veil to cover her face.
‘You’re English?’
‘Yes, from Bristol. I arrived in America about five months ago.’
‘What brought you here to St Louis? Did you already know Dr Feigenbaum? Is he your guardian? Only most people who come to St Louis are German, although there’s quite a lot of Irish people too. And Poles, now I think about it. Oh no. There I go again. Asking too many questions and giving you no time to answer them. You must think me very rude.’
‘Not at all. And no, I did not know the doctor. We made our acquaintance on the voyage out.’
There was an immediate raising of the eyebrows and a little giggle from the woman. Eliza regretted her own lack of equivocation. She cursed herself for not going along with the guardianship story. Now half of the parish would be making assumptions about the propriety or lack of it in her relationship with the doctor.
Helga Strauss didn’t dwell on it, but breezed on. ‘You must be very brave. Coming here on your own. I was born in St Louis, but my folks still speak German at home. They told me how absolutely terrifying it was deciding to emigrate here - and they had each other. How on earth did you cope all alone? My folks are terribly old fashioned. They’re over there.’ She pointed at a crowd of people standing chatting. ‘Papa works in the Lemp brewery. He’s an accountant. I’m a teacher in the elementary school on Western Street.’
‘I used to be a teacher too.’ As Eliza said the words she regretted them. Better to let the past lie. Stop resurrecting things that can never be the same again. She wanted to kick herself. Helga would want to know why she’d stopped teaching and she didn’t want to tell her about the attack. ‘Now I am employed by the doctor as his secretary. He is compiling a book on the history of the brewing industry.’
‘I suppose Dr Feigenbaum pays you lots more money than you could earn as a teacher. I’d love to have a higher paid job. But then I will be stopping teaching soon.’ She slipped off a glove and held out her hand for Eliza to inspect her engagement ring. ‘I will be married in the spring. That’s him over there.’ She nudged Eliza and nodded her head in the direction of a bespectacled young man with pock-marked skin and a tangle of dark hair. He must have been a good three inches shorter than his intended bride.
‘Not much to look at, I know. But Peter’s a good man and he’s recently been made a senior salesman for the Anheuser-Busch brewery. After we’re married we may have to move to another city if he gets promoted again. It seems like all of America is crazy for lager beer from St Louis.’
Frau Bauer appeared at Eliza’s side and gave her a silent signal that she was heading home.
Eliza seized the opportunity for escape. ‘It was nice to meet you, Miss Strauss. Good morning.’
The woman clutched at her arm. ‘Do call me Helga. You must come for tea. Next week. Sunday afternoon. About four. Mama always bakes on a Saturday. She makes a delicious sachertorte!’ She slipped a visiting card into Eliza’s hand. ‘See you next Sunday, Eliza.’ Then she was gone.
Frau Bauer gave an almost imperceptible roll of her eyes and the two of them crossed the road back to the house.
24
Letter from America
November 1878
St Louis, Missouri
My darlingest boy, my love, my Jack,
I ask myself why I am writing this when I will never send it and you will never read it. I wrote many times before – care of the school and the MacBrides, but when you did not reply I wrote to the Wenlocks and they told me you had married Miss MacBride. Oh my darling, how did they make you do that? Why did you not run away and come to find me? I’m sorry that is not a fair question. I know you would never have agreed to the marriage if you had been left with any choice.
As I write this I have decided to imagine that somehow you will know what I have written. That you can read my mind. That my words will reach you. I know it is foolish, but I cannot help myself. If I do not try to talk to you I shall go mad.
So much time has now passed since that terrible day when you were dragged from my arms and taken away to your fate.? I had prayed that you would
have convinced Mr MacBride and Father O’Driscoll that Mary Ellen has been telling lies and that one day you would join me here. Now I know you are in in the north of England and I will never see you again. I do not think I am strong enough to bear that.
I am living in a place called St Louis. It is on the banks of the Mississippi River. The city is a fine one and growing rapidly. There is a big iron bridge here that crosses the Mississippi and opened just two years ago. It makes me think of Mr Brunel’s iron bridge in Bristol and of course that means thinking of you (but, dearest Jack, I think of you all the time anyway – I do not need a bridge to remind me).
My employment here is as the assistant to a German doctor. I transcribe his notes on the history and development of the brewing industry – it is his life’s work and you can imagine it is very dull indeed. Doctor Feigenbaum (who is German but speaks excellent English) has been very kind.
My love, there is something else that I must tell you. I am no longer the girl you knew in Bristol. Something happened to me before I left New York – indeed it was the reason I left New York as it prevented me from getting employment as a teacher. My face was disfigured in an accident and I am afraid that were you to look upon me now you would not love me any more. But then I tell myself that no matter what happened to you I would still love you just the same and so perhaps, my love, you would be able to look beyond my face to the person inside, the girl who still loves you with all her heart and soul.
I can only say these things knowing you will never read them.
I wrote twice to Sister Callista. She was always a good and kind woman and I prayed that she might be able to send some news of you but there was no reply from her either. I hope and pray she has not been punished for trying to help us.
My beloved, you are always in my thoughts, from the moment I waken until I close my eyes at night. And of course you are always in my prayers. Will we ever be together again? I pray every day that you will find a way to get in touch with me - that God or the Blessed Virgin Mary will send me a sign so I will know you still care for me and think of me.