The Gilded Years

by Karin Tanabe

  Porter often wrote to Anita not only of his days at Harvard, full of club activities and sporting events, but also of his Chicago life and what he was looking forward to after graduation. He wrote about riding the elevated railway system with his mother for the first time and how much they both loved it. Passionate about all forms of transportation, when Anita told him about cycling around campus on Lottie’s new bicycles, he wrote back and said he could not wait to show her what a wheelman he was and that they could bicycle together not only on the grand avenues of the city but along Lake Michigan. The city was expanding faster than any other city in American history, he explained to Anita, and he couldn’t wait to go back and be a big part of the reason why. Anita imagined herself right next to him, living a life marked by freedom, just like his mother had. With every letter she received, the idea of Chicago, of continuing her education there, of a life with Porter, became more vibrant, more real.

  If the circumstances were different, Lottie might have been jealous of the attention Porter was paying Anita, but it was apparent that she had her sights fixed very close to her new circle, squarely on Anita’s brother. Lottie brought the same passion to everything she did. So, just as she had taken to Anita as the sister she never had, she focused her romantic aspirations on Frederick. She had written him several letters, and though he had only responded to a few, Henry Silsbury of Harvard was quickly fading from the scene. He had proved to be a terrible correspondent, and Lottie had her mind set on taking Frederick to the Phil Day dance. Meanwhile, not only was Anita more than aware that Lottie and Frederick were exchanging letters; she was playing a hand in it.

  Since Frederick and Anita’s freshman year, the two had used a go-between at Cornell. A friend of Anita’s from Boston who taught in Ithaca knew of Anita’s situation and allowed Frederick to use her address. She would then forward his mail to him so that no one could discover that the white Frederick Hemmings who pretended to attend Cornell was actually the colored Frederick Hemmings who was a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  Frederick had written to his sister and explained to her that he was responding to Lottie, as little as he could but still a few letters, and that he planned to stop as soon as he felt it was appropriate. As hypocritical as Anita felt her brother’s actions were, she understood that Lottie was not someone you could handle abrasively. So the letters passed between them, and Anita did her best to keep Lottie’s affections for Frederick subdued while she quietly allowed hers for Porter to soar.

  With the late autumn well settled in at Vassar, the season’s next excitement was the annual class trip to Mohonk Mountain House, twenty miles west, in New Paltz. This Arcadian excursion was one that Vassar students took twice during their time in Poughkeepsie, first as freshmen, then again in their senior year. The class of 1897 still reminisced fondly about their trip in ’93 and they were twittering with excitement as the second outing inched closer. With Vassar’s growing numbers—the class of ’97 alone had 104 members—the visit had to be divided in two, half the girls traveling in October and the remaining in November. Anita and Lottie had been assigned to the November 8 trip and had been listening to the first group’s highly embellished accounts of Catskills climbs since their outing on October 17.

  Anita had just one class left before she could retire to her room and start discussing the next day’s excursion with Lottie, Belle, and Caroline. She hurried into Professor Franklin’s advanced Latin class, her surprise favorite of the semester, and set up her inkstand on the large mahogany table. Susan Braley Franklin was one of six female teachers at Vassar with a doctoral degree, something Anita had dreamed of attaining since her freshman year. The two had spoken at length about Miss Franklin’s path to her advanced degree, and the teacher had seemed sure Anita could achieve the same success. But today she stopped her student as she came into the room, the first to arrive.

  “Miss Hemmings, if you’re not pressed, could you stay a few moments after class today? I’ve been meaning to discuss something with you,” she said.

  “Is it about my last translation?” Anita asked, suddenly panicked that her strong grade was in jeopardy.

  “No, no. Nothing to be concerned about, Miss Hemmings. I’d just like a quick word.”

  “Yes, Miss Franklin,” said Anita, trying to sound confident.

  The hour-long analysis of the poems of Propertius and Catullus moved as swiftly as a frozen pond. Anita had never before had a class in which she didn’t contribute one word to the discussion. She listened to Hortense Lewis speak knowledgeably about Propertius and looked on blankly as Belle Tiffany presented the influence of the Alexandrian school on Catullus’s work, a summary they had written together the day before. Belle looked to Anita to share the points she crafted, but Anita’s dark eyes were glassed over in distress.

  After the class had concluded, Anita tried her best to appear deep into her translation of Catullus’s poem 61. She hoped Belle would not linger as they often walked to the senior parlor together following class. Belle touched her shoulder as she walked out, aware of the academic trances that Anita could find herself in when it came to dead languages. Miss Franklin waited until Anita closed her book, never one to interrupt the study of Latin, then walked over and shut the door before perching herself in front of Anita’s wooden table.

  “Miss Hemmings, let’s put away the work now. I don’t want to speak to you about your Latin.”

  “Thank you, Miss Franklin,” said Anita, packing away her translations.

  Miss Franklin assumed a relaxed position, almost as if she were going to sit with her legs folded on her desk.

  “Miss Hemmings, you prepared for Vassar at Northfield Seminary, did you not?” she asked. “Dwight Moody’s school in Massachusetts?”

  “Yes, I did,” Anita confirmed, searching her brain for the relevance of that to her Latin class. Her academic shortcomings were few, and they certainly were not in the classics. “Do you think they did a poor job preparing me?”

  “No, of course not,” said Miss Franklin, fidgeting with the sleeve of her heavy black dress. “I don’t mean to imply that at all. You are one of the strongest Latin students in ’97. I do hope you’ll pursue your study after graduation, if Greek does not inspire you more.”

  Anita nodded, to indicate that she intended to pursue one of the two.

  “I just hoped to speak about your time at Northfield, as I have a very close friend working as an instructor there. Perhaps you had her as a teacher when you were a Northfield student in ’92? A Miss Emma Bassett. Did you happen to become acquainted with her?”

  “I did know her, yes,” Anita answered. Miss Bassett had been a well-liked teacher at Northfield Seminary. She had taught Anita’s class on Cicero, which she had taken along with French, geometry, and algebra for the year she was there.

  “I recently met Miss Bassett at a lecture in Albany, and we, after much discussion of the teaching of Latin at the high school level, turned to the topic of the students at Northfield. She mentioned that there was a Negro alumna, very strong in Latin, whom she is still in contact with, a Miss Elizabeth Baker, now a student at Wellesley. She was also there in ’92, I believe, and the following year as well.”

  At the sound of her closest friend’s name, Anita stiffened before making her own effort to appear relaxed.

  “Yes, Elizabeth Baker,” said Anita, making sure not to use her friend’s nickname, Bessie, the only one Anita ever used for her. “Our time there overlapped.”

  “That is what I heard,” said Miss Franklin. “Miss Bassett mentioned that not only did your time overlap at Northfield, but that you roomed together for a year. That you requested to room with Miss Baker, the Negro daughter of a traveling cracker salesman.”

  Anita felt the blood rush to her face. It was true. She had requested to room with Bessie. She’d attended Northfield as a white student, having always intended to apply to Vassar from there, but she had asked to room with Bessie and the school hadn’t balked at
the idea. There was no other self-described Negro woman in the class of ’92, and the school authorities could not place Bessie with a white woman unless one volunteered. They were thrilled to have such a volunteer in Anita Hemmings.

  Anita looked up and saw Miss Franklin’s concerned face waiting for an answer. She could see clearly that Miss Franklin, a strict instructor who hailed from a small town in Maine and spoke often of growing up in a puritanical household, was very surprised to hear such an allegation. Anita considered fabricating a story, saying that the professor at Northfield was gravely mistaken. Or she could leave out large strands of the truth, portraying her time at Northfield like a moth-eaten garment.

  “Miss Bassett is correct,” she said, hoping her face looked as calm as her voice sounded. “I did request to live with Miss Baker. I made her acquaintance when visiting the school a year before and found her most agreeable, despite her strains of Negro blood.” In truth, Anita and Bessie had been acquainted for more than a decade and had decided together to attend Northfield.

  Miss Franklin started, and Anita looked out the window, wishing she were on the other side of it.

  “It’s very surprising,” said the professor. “It’s a school that admits the other races, is it not? I imagine there were other Negroes for Miss Baker to room with, instead of a white woman like you. And one choosing to do so? It’s unheard-of.”

  “It is not unheard-of at Northfield,” said Anita, thinking back on her decision to claim she was Caucasian before entering. If she had intended to apply to Wellesley like Bessie Baker, she would not have had to. “Dwight Moody, as you may know, thinks of all the races as equals. He has been a friend to the Indian and the Negro since the founding of the school. But in truth, I was fond of Elizabeth and thought her character was more important than her race, in this instance.” Anita was starting to sound defensive, though she desperately didn’t want to.

  “That’s extremely modern of you, Miss Hemmings, but dangerous, too. I dare say, if the girls here knew about it, they would be shocked. Some might even ostracize you. You are without a doubt the only girl here who has ever roomed with a Negro, even one whom Miss Bassett described as high yellow.”

  “I imagine I am,” said Anita, thinking about her current roommate and her roommates past. Now they, too, had roomed with a girl who could be described as high yellow.

  “When Miss Bassett told me about this unique circumstance between you and Miss Baker, I was astonished, Miss Hemmings. You’ve always struck me as such a serious, conservative girl. Not one who would make rash, unsound decisions.”

  “But do you not see it as Christian charity, as I did?” said Anita, hoping to save herself through religion.

  Religion had helped her many times, Anita thought to herself, remembering the note of recommendation that her Trinity Church reverend had penned on her behalf for entrance into Northfield. He, a staunch abolitionist, had been the only one she called upon to vouch for her character, and he had not mentioned her race, which allowed her to start passing for the sake of education. He, thought Anita, envisioning the tall, imposing man whose sermons she had listened to during her teenage years, was a model of the kind of charity she hoped Miss Franklin had within her.

  “Of course, Christian charity,” said her teacher, briefly acknowledging her point. “I admit it was noble of you, especially at such a young age. So many other women in their teens and twenties would not see such a decision as the Christian thing to do. The truth is, there are limits to everything, even Christian charity.”

  Anita nodded but maintained her level gaze. Miss Franklin was a kindly, idealistic person, she knew, but she was trying to understand something Anita could never let her unravel.

  “I have been an active member of the Young Women’s Christian Association here at Vassar, and much of my adult belief system in Christianity stems from the work of Northfield’s Mr. Moody,” Anita said. Her voice sounded strong, but every fiber in her body felt ready to give up. Was it possible, she wondered, that Miss Franklin had an inkling of her true identity? If she had, she would have spoken plainly, Anita was sure of it. In the lecture room, just the two of them, she would have said the word. Negro. I think you, too, are a Negro. You are a high-yellow Negro, and you do not belong here. No sensible white woman would ask to room with a Negro, so it must be that you are one, too. But that was not said and, Anita prayed, not thought, either.

  “Do you not believe in the separation of the races, Miss Hemmings? That a Negro should move aside for a white person when passing on the street? That they should not share our facilities?” Miss Franklin asked, her fingers gripping her desk.

  Anita tried to soften her expression, to imagine she was trying to fall asleep. Tension, in this case, could be the end of her.

  “Elizabeth Baker was quite a different sort of Negro,” she said, finally. “And so high yellow that it was easy to forget that she was a Negro.”

  Miss Franklin looked at her, and received dignified silence in return. It was plain that further explanation—and certainly no apology—would be given.

  “That will be all, Miss Hemmings,” the teacher said, looking down as though shaken by Anita’s conviction. “And you can do away with that concerned expression. I won’t speak of Miss Baker again.”

  “Thank you, Miss Franklin,” said Anita, moving toward the door.

  “Do you and she remain friendly?” Miss Franklin asked, delaying her.

  “No, I’m afraid we don’t,” said Anita. Miss Franklin nodded and dismissed her student, who rushed out the door, almost running into Lottie.

  “Finally! I’ve been waiting here for hours. Or what felt like hours,” said Lottie, pushing herself off the wall she’d been resting against. “Belle said you remained in Latin class after the bell, and I said, ‘Anita Hemmings? My Anita Hemmings? Better at Latin than Agelastus? It can’t be.’ So I trotted over here to check, but there you were, locked behind the door like Eustache Dauger. I pressed my ear quite hard against it, but I couldn’t hear a thing. If you ask me, they are going too far with these fire doors. So Anita, did you survive? Or are you failing Miss Franklin’s class? Is a meeting with Prexy Taylor on the horizon?” she asked, using the students’ favorite nickname for the school president.

  “I made it through,” said Anita, as the two walked away. “It was just a brief discussion about post-Vassar life.”

  “Oh, no, not post-Vassar life.” Lottie put her hand to her forehead and stumbled a few steps for added effect. She’d seen it done in An Ideal Husband onstage last fall and had wanted to imitate it since. “Let’s just ignore that there is life post-Vassar and embrace the present. And speaking of embracing, look in front of us, that is Monsieur Jean Charlemagne Bracq. The dashing love of Sarah Douglas’s life.”

  “Excuse me?” said Anita, surprised that Lottie would speak of a professor that way but pleased that her meeting with Miss Franklin had been forgotten. Men always trumped Latin.

  “What?” said Lottie, surprised in turn by Anita’s ignorance of campus gossip. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know. She’s been in love with him since he first said ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle Douglas’ to her chaste ears in French literature class. Did you never hear the rumors? They were louder than a stampeding bull last year.”

  “I most definitely did not.”

  “Anita,” said Lottie, stopping in mid-dramatic step to peer at her roommate. “What were you doing for the last three years? It’s as if you were locked up in the attic of Main speaking Greek to the wall.”

  “That’s not far off, except that I was a few floors below.”

  Lottie resumed her steps and Anita followed, because that’s what her world had become, following Lottie’s confident lead.

  “Personally, I would like her far better if the rumors were true, but they can’t be. Sarah’s not the type to even kiss before an engagement. She must just lie there, all alone, and dream about her professor like Charlotte Brontë. What a bore. Kissing men is so much more interesting th
an thinking about kissing men.”

  “You live to shock, Lottie Taylor,” said Anita, her laughter with Lottie serving as a welcome diversion after her alarming meeting. Anita hurried ahead of her and said, “Maybe one day, I’ll shock you, too.”

  CHAPTER 9

  With the long-anticipated Mohonk trip looming in less than twelve hours, Anita’s dramatic detention slipped even further from her mind. Lottie, meanwhile, redirected all her energy into galvanizing the fourth floor of Main for its day of freedom outdoors.

  As was the custom the day of the trip, the first bell went off at 5:45 A.M. and the two girls rushed through their morning routines, piling on thick dresses and cream-colored wool sweaters with their class year embroidered on the chest. Anita and Lottie savored the moment as they dressed. They would always be ’97, but their time as part of a senior class on campus was ticking quickly by.

  With their clothes layered artfully and their hats pinned to their heads, they ran down the stairs as soon as they saw the wagons approaching the drive around Fred’s Nose. They burst out the doors, Anita’s hand grasped in Lottie’s.

  “Come, Anita! We need to be in the front of the wagon!” Lottie screamed. They ran, their hats tilting off their heads, tripping on their skirts like youthful tumbleweeds.

  “Don’t you take that seat, Mary Chambers!” Lottie warned as they joined the three other girls on the first wagon. “I’ve had that very seat saved in my mind since freshman year.”

  “You’re as childish as they come, Lottie Taylor,” said Mary, moving one row back, but she was laughing. Everyone trod lightly around Mary because she was class president, except for Lottie. The roommates sat snugly together, their hands tight in their laps against the cold, ready to absorb every moment of the day’s promised bliss.

  “I’m so happy we are not on one of the barges. This is so much more amusing, isn’t it?” said Lottie, bouncing up and down as the horses twitched and whinnied in their harnesses. “We had to go by wagon again, just like freshman year.”