The Gilded Years

by Karin Tanabe

  Before Anita went upstairs for the night to the room she shared with her sister, and Frederick to the one he shared with Robert Jr., her brother stopped her at the stairs and put his finger to his lips. He led her quietly by the arm into the cramped kitchen.

  “We need to talk about Phil Day,” he whispered, trying to get close to the heat still coming from the open fire.

  “Lottie hasn’t forgotten you,” Anita whispered back, “but she’s starting to. The man we found as her escort for Phil, Joseph Southworth, he was perfect for her. Amusing, too. Everybody was pleased with him.”

  “And you?” asked Frederick, firmly. “Whom were you pleased with?”

  “Not Porter Hamilton, if that’s what you’re implying,” said Anita. She hated to lie to Frederick, but it was four days before Christmas and if she told him the truth, she feared their holiday would be ruined. She would confess everything to him in a letter when she was back at school. She wanted to give him time to think about it away from their family; she couldn’t risk him confiding in her parents now. If they knew, they wouldn’t let her return to Poughkeepsie.

  “He was not your escort at Phil?” Frederick probed.

  “No. He was present, but I didn’t share one dance with him. We exchanged a few polite words and I spent my time with others. But not one longer than the next.”

  “Good,” said Frederick, relaxing. “That has been weighing on me, Anita. I understand the temptation, but you cannot. You never can.”

  “I know,” said Anita. “I understand that now.” She gave her brother a kiss on the cheek and said, “Good night, Frederick. I’m so happy we are both home.” Anita felt her face contorting with her lies, but Frederick, appeased, didn’t appear to notice his sister’s strained expression or the tension in her step as she walked up the creaking wooden stairs to the top floor.

  CHAPTER 13

  Three days after Christmas, Anita had just finished getting dressed to stand by Elizabeth Baker as she married William Henry Lewis at St. John the Evangelist Church when her friend took her by surprise. Bessie walked into her bedroom in her parents’ small Cambridge house and closed the door quickly behind her.

  Like so many Negroes Anita knew, Bessie had been born in the South and had come north as a child. Her family was from Halifax, Virginia, a small town on the Tennessee border. Her father, Eldridge Baker, had been a laborer there, but in Cambridge he worked as a salesman and as a waiter in a hotel. Bessie had left Virginia as a baby and had never returned. One night in their shared room at Northfield, Anita and Bessie had looked out their large window over the campus, down the hill to Dwight Moody’s white cottage with its double chimneys, and had agreed to never travel to the state their parents had fled. That same night, Bessie had confided in Anita that she had been born when her mother, Caroline, was still unmarried. She sometimes thought—though she felt sinful for entertaining such thoughts—that Eldridge, the only father she had ever known, was not her biological one as she was so much lighter-skinned than her siblings and was born before her mother married him.

  But all of that was forgotten now. It was her wedding day, and to Bessie, and by extension Anita, the world was perfect for one afternoon.

  Bessie was wearing her wedding dress of brown and gray camel’s hair, topped with a coat basque, the front a beautiful heliotrope silk. Her wide hat, with black velvet trim, matched her gown and gloves. Anita looked down at Bessie’s long, slender hands; instead of holding flowers, she clutched a white leather prayer book. Anita opened her arms wide to embrace her friend.

  “Oh Bessie, you’re getting married!” she said. There was no one, not even her family, whom she missed the way she missed Bessie. Bessie had been with her when she was living as a white student. In their shared room, Anita was able to let her guard down every night, something she sorely missed at Vassar.

  “I am,” said Bessie, embracing her friend, her prayer book pressed tight against the back of Anita’s blue silk and lace dress. “And to the most wonderful man. I can’t wait for you to meet him properly. He’s primed to do important things in his lifetime. He already has, but I think all this—Harvard and football—is just the beginning. There’s much more coming for him.”

  Even though William Henry Lewis was already a legend in the Negro community in Massachusetts, and one with strong ties to local white political leaders, he and Bessie had decided to keep their wedding intimate. There were but forty guests in the pews, and most were prominent Negroes from Cambridge, Wellesley, and Boston. Anita and Bessie watched from the carriage as their families entered the church. Along with them were respected Negro men, friends of William, and whom Bessie pointed out to Anita as they made their way in through one of the three front doors.

  “That is Dr. Samuel Courtney,” she noted as one man walked from a hansom to the church. “A renowned physician. Oh, but more importantly, the older man behind him with the closely cropped hair and whiskers is the famous Archibald Grimké. He is the nephew of the abolitionist Grimké sisters and a fellow graduate of Harvard Law School. He currently serves as American consul to the Dominican Republic. A noted writer, too. I’ve never made his acquaintance myself, but William was telling me he would make time in his travels to attend, and here he is. How kind of him.”

  “Of course he did,” said Anita, watching the parade of distinguished men with interest. “William is marrying the most beautiful woman in Massachusetts. Who wouldn’t want to attend?”

  After an emotional moment a few minutes later in which Bessie pledged that her marriage would do nothing to change their friendship, Anita walked her down the aisle to William, who was standing with his best man, J. Howard Lee of Newton, Massachusetts.

  Anita and Bessie had been so alike until they went to Northfield together. From the day they had filled out their short applications, Anita had made the irreversible decision to be a white student, foreseeing passing as the only way she could gain admission to Vassar, and Bessie, though physically she could have done the same, chose not to. But on Bessie’s wedding day, Anita felt as if they were the same girls again, from similar backgrounds and on a shared path.

  She had often wondered what her life would be like if she had not decided to study for the Vassar entrance exam, but had remained a Negro and tried to gain admission to Wellesley. Harriet Alleyne Rice had been the first Negro to graduate from that notable school, in 1887, but she and Bessie knew that Wellesley was not likely to admit two in two years. Bessie was only the third Negro to be granted admission, and nearly ten years after the first and second. Anita hadn’t wanted to take Bessie’s place. That’s what she remembered telling herself at the time. But the truth was, she had wanted to go to Vassar since that day in church; she just wasn’t sure how. Yes, Mame Marshall had suggested passing, but that did not take care of the paperwork. Northfield—a boarding school that bright women of little means attended after graduating from less demanding high schools—made it a possibility. The school, which some entered for only a year or two, was excellent at preparing women for college entrance exams and provided her with distance from her Boston high school, which had her in its records as Negro. But Northfield did much more than that. To live in a place where differences were embraced and genuinely Christian principles trumped prejudices taken as God’s truth elsewhere, gave Anita the confidence she needed to fill out her Vassar application and to say yes when she was accepted.

  It was not until well after the ceremony that Anita was able to properly speak to William Lewis, and she quickly understood why not just the Negro community of Boston, but white, educated Boston, had fallen under his spell. He had eyes with a rare depth and brightness, a firm build and broad face with a soft wave of black hair parted elegantly in the middle. He was almost as light-skinned as she and Bessie were, though not enough to disavow Negro heritage.

  “Thank you for being part of today,” he said, bowing to Anita. “Bessie is fonder of you than you’ll ever know.”

  “And I of her,” said Anita, taken aba
ck by William’s commanding presence.

  “Good,” he said, watching Anita change her casual posture to match his formality. “She is a woman who should be loved.”

  Anita nodded and looked around the room for her friend, but she was busy greeting other guests. She glimpsed Bessie’s sister, Gertrude, whom she had already spoken with, mentioning nothing about her trip to Radcliffe. Feeling a familiar wave of shame about her behavior that day, she turned back to William and changed the subject. “Bessie told me that it was W. E. B. Du Bois who introduced you, when you were a student at Amherst.”

  “That’s right,” said William, speaking informally about the great Negro leader. “Elizabeth and W. E. B., along with the other Boston-area students—Harvard’s William Monroe Trotter and others—they all attended my graduation. I was not the only Negro graduate that year; my Virginia Normal classmate William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson and George Washington Forbes of Ohio graduated, too.”

  “Three Negroes graduated in the same class?”

  “Yes, class of 1892. Life opened its gates for me at Amherst, Anita. It wasn’t like Elizabeth’s experience has been at Wellesley. I was not alone.”

  “I can’t imagine,” said Anita, who had never been in a class with three Negroes.

  “No, you can’t,” he said, softening slightly, his words coming slower. “But I will tell you one anecdote and maybe you’ll have a better idea of my school. In my early days there, the president of Amherst College handed me tuition money while I was working as a horse groomer. I was standing in a barn brushing an Appaloosa, and he came and put a stack of notes in my palm. It was quite a bit more than I would have made in six months of grooming horses and he said it came straight from God himself. Can you imagine that? According to President Merrill Gates, God was set on my graduating as an Amherst man. And then I captained the football team. It was a memorable four years.” He allowed a small smile to show on his broad, proud face.

  Anita could barely comprehend what William was describing. She knew he had been a football captain and star at Harvard, the first Negro all-American as a law student and then a coach, but she had not known of his happiness at Amherst. It was painful to realize that there were academic communities that embraced the Negro scholar, but hers was not one of them.

  “I didn’t know that Bessie was acquainted with W. E. B. Du Bois back in ’92,” Anita said. “We were still at Northfield together then.”

  “Yes, she was,” William confirmed. “And is even more so today.”

  “I feel foolish that I didn’t know,” said Anita, trying not to sound like a mere acquaintance of the bride.

  “Well, Miss Hemmings,” said William, “it is hard to keep up with the actions and friendships of the pioneers of our race when you are living among Caucasians as one of them. Things will change for you after you return to Boston, as yourself.”

  Anita said nothing, but her throat tightened. She was in a room full of people who were considered the very best of the Negro race, those destined, perhaps, to help transform the country, and she was the only one who had chosen to duck the obstacles of being a Negro college student. French and English descent—that’s what she had written on her college application. But it was for Vassar, she told herself as she said goodbye to William and watched him walk over to his bride. She had wanted that more than this.

  As the evening wound down, Anita found herself alone with Bessie for the first time since the ceremony. She stole her friend away and wrapped her arms around her.

  “Promise me again that I won’t lose you to marriage. I don’t know what my life would be without your friendship, Bessie. We are such a part of each other.”

  “Of course you won’t lose me,” said Bessie. “You’ll never lose me.”

  Anita let her friend go, and looked at her, a wife.

  “Do you think I made the wrong decision?” she asked. “It’s horrible to ask you such a question now, on your wedding day, but it was something your husband said to me, and now my mind is racing to the past, questioning everything I never stumbled over then. Should I have done what you did? Taken the entrance exam for Wellesley or Radcliffe and not Vassar?”

  Bessie didn’t hesitate.

  “No, Anita,” she said, firmly. “You took the exam for Vassar because you knew you could pass it. You’re more intelligent than I. You always have been. You had to take it, you had to prove to everyone—our everyone, their everyone—that a Negro could soar through their exam and be accepted to Vassar just as well as a white woman. They don’t know you’re there, but we know. That is the most important part. You’re so clever, so worthy; it would have been the great shame of your life if you never tried.”

  “You’re braver,” said Anita. “You may wrongly think that I’m more intelligent, but you are braver. It is the Negro walking as a Negro through a white world who is braver. Always.”

  “But now I’m not so brave, am I? I won’t be returning to Wellesley, I won’t be granted a degree. So now you have to obtain your A.B. for both of us. You’ll think of me when you walk for your diploma. Promise?”

  “Yes, I will,” said Anita, reaching for her friend’s hand.

  “Northfield was so different from Vassar and even Wellesley, wasn’t it?” said Bessie, holding Anita’s hand tight. “I miss standing on the tower of Marquand Hall with you and looking down on the campus, on the farmland, all those beautiful stone and brick buildings.” She smiled momentarily at the memory but grew serious again as the concern lingered in Anita’s face. “Sometimes I wish we were still there.”

  “I’ve always wanted to ask you something, and now that I’ve started speaking like this, let me just ask it plainly,” said Anita. She knew she had to let her friend return to her guests, but she wanted to hold on to their intimacy a moment longer.

  “You are not speaking inappropriately—”

  “Am I a coward?” asked Anita, interrupting her. “Did I apply to Vassar because I’m intelligent and wanted to attend the very best school, or was it because I was afraid; because I no longer wanted to live as Negro in a white world, because it was too difficult?”

  Bessie shook her head vigorously. “You did not do it because you were afraid,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything frighten you. As for being Negro in a white world, you were one until Northfield. That’s almost all your life. And you are one now, even if you’re the only one there who is aware of it. But think of this, Anita: Negro or not, you’ve been top of your class again and again. So no, you are not a coward. That school, those people, they are the cowards.”

  CHAPTER 14

  It was after the New Year when Anita and Frederick Hemmings had a most unfortunate encounter. In Cambridge to tutor Greek and chemistry at the home of two Negro high school students preparing for their college entrance exams, the siblings crossed the street to the side where the stately Magnolia Inn reigned. Anita had always liked the Queen Anne–style building, with its five rounded windows and bell tower, and today she wanted to observe it more closely. When she walked past the first lower window, Frederick by her side, she saw reflected there, without question, the beautiful flushed face of Lottie Taylor.

  “Frederick!” she hissed at her brother. “We have to make ourselves scarce. Now!”

  He looked at her trying to jump behind a carriage, but it was too late. Lottie had seen them. She clasped her hands together and ran across the street to them, waving excitedly.

  “Anita and Frederick Hemmings, can that really be the pair of you?” she said through the fur collar enveloping the lower part of her face. “I thought of you both on the train to Boston, but I never did think that I would see you. And here you are, a belated Christmas present to me! I’m always the lucky one. What are you doing here in Cambridge? And right outside the hotel where we stayed, Anita.”

  “Lottie!” said Anita, wrapping her arms around her. “This is such a surprise. A most welcome surprise.” She had no idea why Lottie was in Cambridge, and she was terrified what Lottie might
be able to find out about them in that city, even in a short amount of time. It was highly likely that they could run into an acquaintance from Negro Boston, or one of Frederick’s classmates from the Institute of Technology. The campus was in the Back Bay, but many students hailed from the Cambridge area. Anita had to get rid of Lottie fast. “What on earth are you doing in Cambridge?” she asked, genially.

  “It was an absolute surprise of a visit!” Lottie said, her face as animated as ever. “Father is up from Tennessee and had work to attend to here, and I was growing awfully bored in New York. Yes, I know, how does one get bored in New York, especially during the season? But you see, I can get bored anywhere. I bet I could get bored sitting on the moon. So I decided to come up and pay dear Nettie a visit because she’s such fun, but I didn’t dare telegram you, Anita, so close to Christmas. That’s just not done. And besides, I don’t have your home address. But now here you are, so maybe it was a sign that I should have.”

  “Well, it’s just a joy to see you, regardless of the circumstances,” Anita said smoothly. “It was starting to feel strange not to have you just a wall away.”

  “Wasn’t it!” said Lottie, hugging her friend again.

  While Anita and Lottie fussed over each other and the chance encounter, Frederick stood there wordlessly. Finally he said, with forced warmth, “Lottie Taylor, I’m so pleased to see you again. What a fortuitous coincidence. We are just here in Cambridge paying a New Year’s visit to an aunt who lives near the Yard.”

  “Are you? I didn’t know you two had an aunt in Cambridge,” Lottie replied. “As I said, I’m paying a visit, too. Anita knows the lady in question. Nettie Aldrich, née DeWitt. She lives just off the Yard as well. Are you headed in that direction? You should both come call on her with me. I know she would love to see you again, Anita.”