Eugenia Fowler was the wife of George Fowler, the richest merchant in New York, the owner of the city’s biggest distillery. She had her own coach, an Irish driver, and two black slaves as footmen. She lived to shop—and she loved nothing as much as a bargain. She had told all her friends about the Universal Store’s low prices and our sales had boomed. This had added to Mrs. Fowler’s already imperious style when she visited the store.
I had no trouble bowing low before Mrs. Fowler. I consoled myself with visions of the mahogany chests and walnut highboys I would soon buy for our house, making me Mrs. Fowler’s social equal. I confidently expected to have as much money as Mrs. Fowler when I reached her ancient age of forty-something. Clara found no consolation in such a vision. Without a husband or a prospect of one, she saw no point in filling a house with fine furniture—or her wardrobe with expensive gowns.
In her loneliness, Clara prayed to the Master of Life to send her a purpose in this world. Prayer came naturally to Clara. Her Seneca grandmother had taught her all men and women were linked by their common descent from the Manitou. Her admiration for the teachings of Jesus had intensified this natural sympathy. She felt impelled to reach out, to help, whenever she saw people in pain or misery—sights by no means uncommon in 1730s New York.
One winter day a year ago, a red-haired young Irishwoman named Cicely, obviously a whore, had come into the shop. She had no money and her only dress had been torn in a fight with another whore over a customer. She wanted to know if she could buy a new dress on credit. Clara had given her the cloth and the name of a seamstress, telling her she would pay for the whole thing.
I grew livid when Clara told me about Cicely. “We’ll become the whore’s emporium!” I said. “No respectable woman will go near us. Keep your charity to yourself on Maiden Lane, if you insist on it.”
Word of Clara’s generosity had spread swiftly along Pearl Street and soon several other prostitutes were asking her help to refurbish their outfits. She told them to collect their cloth at her house on Maiden Lane. Often she gave them coffee and a meal—and heard their pathetic life stories. In almost every case they had been seduced and abandoned by a man they had trusted.
Others sought help in the form of wool blankets or cloth for a wool shawl to protect them against New York’s cruel winters. Many of them were free women of her own color. Clara found it impossible to say no to them, too. She always scrupulously reported her generosity to Adam, who noted it in his ledger as a deduction against her share of the profits. I never made any objection to these charitable gifts but I never offered to share them either.
Now, my quick temper soured by my pregnancy, I proceeded to use these debts as another argument against Clara quitting the store. “Don’t you think we should deduct from your share the benefactions you’ve seen fit to bestow on beggars and whores?” I said.
“How much does it come to?” Clara asked.
Duycinck did some hurried addition. “Sixteen pounds six shillings,” he said. “That’s cash from the drawer. Then another one hundred one pounds eight shillings at going prices for dresses, blankets, and the like. Should I charge her wholesale or retail for that?”
“Retail,” I said.
“Malcolm said he’d contribute his one-third share of our partnership to these gifts,” Clara said.
“When did he say that?” I asked.
“Several months ago, when I told him about them.”
“He never mentioned it to me.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I will contribute nothing to a practice that still threatens us with ruin,” I said, now determined to be completely obnoxious. “Only a few days ago, I saw a whore on Broadway dressed in the same cambric we sold to Mrs. Fowler for an evening dress!”
“I hope she saw it too,” Clara said, unable to restrain her detestation of Mrs. Fowler. More than once she had watched her scream insults at her Irish driver or African footmen because they were not standing at attention, ready to receive her, when she left the store.
“Did you hear that, Adam? Can you blame me for being glad to be rid of her?” I cried.
Adam said nothing. The little hunchback shared Clara’s sympathy for the unfortunates of this world—being one of them from birth.
“Damn you both,” I said, struggling to my feet. “You enjoy making me out to be a hard-hearted bitch when all I’m trying to do is protect this business. How do you plan to make a living, Miss Flowers?”
“I think I may become a partner in Hughson’s Tavern.”
“With that lunkhead John Hughson? You’ll lose your money in a year. If ever I’ve seen a man who’s destined to go bankrupt, it’s that dimwit.”
“His wife runs the place,” Clara said. “She has brains enough for both of them. She’s a good woman—who needs help.”
“Oh?” I said. “Has she already received some of your benefactions?”
I glowered at Adam, who paled visibly and admitted that for almost a year we had been carrying money Sarah Hughson owed us for sheets and pillowcases, curtains and tablecloths, purchased when they moved their tavern to a larger building on the Broadway, on the growing west side of the city. Six months was all the credit we normally allowed. But I had been so ill with my pregnancy, I had not given the books more than a cursory glance for a long time.
I looked at the ledger and exploded: “One hundred and fifty pounds! We’ll deduct that from your share, you can be sure of it, Miss Flowers—or the Hughsons will see me in court.”
“They’ve been struggling—but they’ll pay it,” Clara said.
She made no attempt to explain her friendship with Sarah Hughson, a dark-haired talkative woman whose life story reminded Clara of her own. From Yonkers, a town just north of New York, she had fallen in love with a big muscular farmboy and persuaded him to move to the city—where they soon found themselves with four growing daughters and little money. They had opened a tavern to supplement his earnings as a shoemaker. Adam drank at Hughson’s and he had brought Sarah Hughson to the Universal Store, where her anxious flow of words about herself and her family had stirred Clara’s sympathy.
From Adam and from several prostitutes, Clara learned that Mrs. Hughson let the whores use the tavern’s rooms free of charge when they could not pay. When Adam dunned her for the unpaid one hundred fifty pounds she had told Clara about their shortage of cash and her desperate search for a partner. They owed money to their distiller and a half dozen other merchants. Adam had gone over their books and assured Clara it was a good investment. With better management and a more respectable clientele, the tavern could clear five hundred pounds a year—a juicier profit than the Universal Store, whose goods, even at smuggled prices, cost more than rum.
The Hughsons needed cash now to pay their creditors and they would not be thrilled to discover they would have to wait five years for Clara to pay in her full thousand pounds for a half ownership. Clara waited until I departed and asked Adam if I had the money in cash and was deliberately holding it back.
Adam shook his head. “She never lets money sit idle. Almost every cent is out at interest or invested in a ship or a cargo.”
“Does that mean I’m doomed to spend the rest of my days here?” Clara said.
Adam winked. “She could write you a bill of exchange on any merchant in town for the full amount.”
Bills of exchange passed from hand to hand and were used to pay debts. Very often they were never converted into cash. They were a substitute for ready money.
“I’ll talk to Malcolm,” Clara said.
Malcolm was at the King’s Arms Tavern on Broad Street, reading the latest newspapers from London. Since his election to the assembly, he had become intensely interested in politics both in America and in England. As usual, he was surrounded by a group of young men his own age who were equally fascinated by this complicated subject, which did not interest Clara at all. She asked Malcolm if they could talk in private and they retreated to a corner of the shadowy taproom.
She told him about her impasse with me and asked his help.
“You know how hard it is to change her mind about anything,” he said. “It’s no easier for me.”
“Then forget the matter,” Clara said.
“If I had funds of my own, you’d have the money in five seconds. But the latest news about my lawsuit is far from promising.”
“We’ll forget it,” Clara said. “I can tolerate the shopwoman’s lot. It’s not so terrible.”
“No!” Malcolm said, seizing her hand. “For your sake I’ll dare the dragoness in her den.”
“I’m sorry to add to your unhappiness.”
“I can bear it well enough,” he said.
In the momentary silence, they both knew a great deal was being left unsaid. He was half confessing that he enjoyed his wife in bed, in spite of her disposition. He was also admitting that he liked the life of a public man that I had helped him create.
“Do you think my investment in Hughson’s is a good idea?” Clara asked.
“Good and getting better by the day.” He waved a folded newspaper. “The word from Europe is war with Spain or France or both. That will bring the king’s ships and maybe his troops to New York. Every tavern in town will become a gold mine. Even the whores will get rich.”
He was still a warrior. Clara could see he loved the prospect of a war. “That’s a good argument to use on Catalyntie,” she said. “Nothing is more likely to convince her than the word profit.” She told him about Adam’s proposal of a bill of exchange.
“Consider it done,” Malcolm said.
That night, over dinner, Malcolm went to work on me with a nice combination of pleas and threats. He confirmed his promise to share a third of Clara’s charities on his own account and said if I declined to give her a bill of exchange for the full amount we owed her, he would write one himself. I furiously pointed out that under the law it would be my debt as well as his. “I know that,” he said, complacently chewing his venison.
Almost casually, Clara had demonstrated who had more influence with my supposedly devoted husband. Trapped between my anger and old affection, I struggled not to hate my Seneca sister. The baby kicked in my stomach. Maybe he was telling me to bide my time.
The next day, Eugenia Fowler was the store’s first customer. “Clara, my dear girl,” she said. “That cambric you selected for my evening gown was the sensation of the King’s Birthday Ball! Governor Clarke himself told me he’s never seen anything quite as ravishing. I want to buy up every yard you have left, so no one else can get their hands on it.”
“Of course, Mrs. Fowler. But other shops—”
“Other shops won’t have your quality. Holland goods—at least the luxury sort—are so superior to English or French. The Dutch have a way with expensive fabrics. Rather like the Irish with their linen.”
“I’ll have Adam deliver our entire stock to your house this afternoon,” Clara said.
As the great lady departed to her coach, I countermanded Clara’s promise. “I’ll be damned if I’ll sell her all our cambric,” I said. “Send her twenty yards and keep another forty for other customers.”
“I gave her my word,” Clara protested.
“I didn’t see your hand on a Bible,” I said. I clutched my back again and sank into a chair. “I’m sure this monster child is a boy,” I said. “He does nothing but kick. His father adores it, of course. He puts his hand there and chuckles like an eight-year-old.”
In fact, the baby had not stirred. I was telling Clara I had better hopes of keeping Malcolm than she did.
I gazed sourly at my Seneca sister. “So I’m to give you a bill of exchange for the full amount, is that it?”
“I hope so,” Clara said.
“Oh, it must be so. That captain of finance, Malcolm Stapleton, explained it all to me at dinner last night. I’m to tie up a fifth or sixth of my credit to keep you happy. Because if darling Clara is unhappy, he’s unhappy too.”
“I think it’s fair,” Clara said.
“Oh, very fair. While I’m shaped like the sail on a Hudson River sloop in a stiff breeze, you go to him and sigh and sob. You know as well as I do what was stiff by the time you finished with him.”
I was talking like a Seneca again. Clara did not mind that as much as the implication that she had seduced Malcolm into the arrangement. “He thinks it’s a good investment,” she said.
“Let’s hope he’s right,” Catalyntie said. “If I die giving birth to this monster in my belly, I hope you marry him, no matter what anyone says. He’ll need you in more ways than one.”
“You won’t die,” Clara said. “You’ll go on and on, insisting on your own way in everything, becoming colder and more unloving. I often pity Malcolm.”
“But never a tear for me?” I said. “Have you ever thought I’m doing the best I can? Have you thought of where you might be without me? I mean, since I rescued you from your adventure in New Jersey?”
“I know all that!” Clara cried, almost weeping. “But I still want to get away from you—before you destroy me.”
“Nothing can really separate us,” I said. “Here’s your bill of exchange.”
I handed her the paper and stumbled out of the store, managing to conceal my tears until I was a block away. The bill was for the full amount of Clara’s share, 1,426 pounds. I had not deducted any of the gifts to the whores or her African supplicants—or the Hughsons’ debt. Would she see it as a forlorn gesture of love? Probably not.
That night, Adam drew up a letter of agreement and he and Clara hurried through a chilling October drizzle to the Hughsons’ tavern. Adam gazed up at the brick-fronted, timber-roofed building and pronounced it a noble acquisition. Inside was the usual mixture of sailors, whores, and average New Yorkers, drinking, eating, arguing, playing cards or dice.
Malcolm Stapleton was there, orating on what was likely to happen if war broke out. “Between the Spanish and the French West Indies fleets, they could ravage this coast before help arrives from England. The Walpole ministry has let the army and the navy decline to a pathetic state of weakness. We must convince London to take steps immediately to create regiments here in America—”
They extracted Malcolm from his admirers and told him the good news of my capitulation. He nodded. “She told me at dinner,” he said. “Maybe it proves she loves you, Clara, in spite of her hard heart.”
For a moment Clara almost wept. “I’m afraid you’re right,” she said.
In their disorderly office on the tavern’s second floor, Sarah and John Hughson joyously signed the agreement, making Clara a half owner for a thousand pounds. Clara handed over the bill of exchange and Sarah Hughson offered her a bill drawn on her mother’s house in Yonkers for the difference of four hundred twenty-six pounds. Adam wanted to go to Yonkers to inspect the place first but Clara said she trusted the Hughsons. Sarah vowed that the bill would receive priority among the tavern’s debts, as soon as the outstanding obligations were paid.
John Hughson insisted on opening a bottle of their best port to celebrate the deal. “You’re the answer to a year of prayers to the Virgin,” Sarah said, beaming at Clara.
“The Virgin?” Clara said.
“I was raised a Catholic. We pray to the Virgin Mary. She never fails to answer a prayer,” Sarah said.
Clara knew little about Catholicism beyond what Bogardus had taught us. “Where does she get her power?” she asked.
“From being the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God.”
In the office doorway swayed Mary Worth, one of the city’s older, fatter whores. “Oh, Sarah,” she said in a singsong voice. “There’s a captain downstairs who’s lost his purse at cards—but he has pounds a-plenty on his ship—”
“Take him to room number ten,” Sarah Hughson said. “But mind you get the money out of him tomorrow, hear?”
“Oh, I will, depend on it.”
Mary vanished and Mrs. Hughson finished her port. “I think the Virgin finds little fault with the si
ns of the flesh,” she said.
Clara was amazed, knowing the harsh puritanism of the Dutch Reformed and other Protestant churches. She looked forward to learning more about this strange faith.
Downstairs Malcolm Stapleton helped John Hughson hoist Clara onto the bar and introduce her as the new half owner of the tavern. Hughson tried to make a speech of it, but the port had addled his not very abundant wits just enough to get the facts all wrong. He told everyone Clara had borrowed a thousand pounds from the Stapletons to rescue him from bankruptcy. Clara saw dismay on Malcolm’s face—he knew the story would convince everyone in New York that Clara was his mistress. Was he unhappy because the story made him an unfaithful husband—or because it was not true? Clara wondered.
While Hughson talked, the faces of the crowd swirled before Clara’s eyes in the light from two huge iron chandeliers, each with a dozen blazing candles. Some white, some black, mostly young, they were a motley group—but she felt closer to them than she would ever feel to the customers of the Universal Store. Even if the good cheer they displayed was mostly the product of rum, it was better than the brittle jealousy and petty envy she saw so often among the rich.
One face caught her attention: her old friend Caesar. “Hey, beautiful, remember me?” he said, pushing his way to the bar as Malcolm lowered Clara to the floor.
“Of course I remember you,” Clara said.
“She’d rather forget you,” Malcolm said, shoving him away. Everyone who drank at the city’s taverns knew Caesar. He made the rounds almost every night, often peddling stolen goods in return for drinks.
“What’s this?” Caesar said. “The great assemblyman doesn’t give a damn for a poor nigger who can’t vote for him? Your little piece of chocolate cake had a better time with Caesar than she’s ever had with you.”
Malcolm punched Caesar in the face, sending him flying backward across a table of cardplayers to land in a heap with cards and bottles and rum in a mess around him. “What the hell was all that about?” one of the cardplayers asked.
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