An Embarrassment of Riches

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Because I didn’t come in one and no, I don’t want to return in one of yours,’ Alexander said before the footman could reply. ‘I like to walk. It’s fun.’

  Charlie raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Don’t let your father find out. He’ll say it’s the peasant in you and cut you off without a dollar.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Alexander said easily, but as he strolled down the steps and across the cobbled courtyard fronting the Schermerhorn mansion he was furiously angry. Charlie could be an absolute idiot at times. No-one in the Schermerhorn/Karolyis family ever referred to the Karolyis family’s beginnings. Not even in fun. They were too recent. Too likely to be also remembered outside the family.

  A minion hurried forward to open the giant wrought-iron gates for him and he stepped outside into the hurly-burly of Fifth Avenue.

  Charlie, of course, had no such skeletons in his family closet. Schermerhorns had been one of the first Dutch families to settle in New Amsterdam. They had quickly forged a large estate for themselves and within two or three generations had amassed a fortune. The fortune was not quite as large now as it had once been, but Schermerhorns were still the crème de la crème of New York society. Over the years they might have indulged, behind closed doors, in wife-beating and adultery and even lapsed into madness, but the accusation of ill-breeding could never be laid at their door. They were Schermerhorns. They were not only the crème de la crème of society, they were society. No wonder Charlie had no realization of how unnerving his last witticism had been.

  He began to walk south, towards Washington Square. Karolyises were also, now, the crème de la crème of high society, but, even though this accolade had been granted long before his own birth, Alexander knew that the achievement had not been an easy one. It had taken his father’s marriage to a Schermerhorn to ensure that the richest family in New York was also a family acceptable in the drawing-rooms of the haut ton.

  A horse-cart clattered past, an elegant four-in-hand hard on its heels. Alexander coughed as he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. His father never allowed his own father’s origins to be mentioned, not even between themselves. He was Victor Karolyis, heir to a man who had had the foresight to buy up vast tracts of what was now New York when those tracts were no more than run-down farms and marshland. A man who never sold what he had once bought. A man who, in his real-estate ventures and his shipping interests, was a financial genius. That he was also the son of a man born in a thatched-roofed hovel, in an unremarked village deep in the Hungarian Plains, was too shaming a fact for him to acknowledge even to himself. Almost the first thing he had done on attaining his majority, was to have a genealogical tree drawn up linking the Karolyis name to that of ancient Hungarian nobility. And then he had married a Schermerhorn.

  Alexander strolled past the gilded gates leading to the De Peysters’ red-brick mansion. The De Peysters were nearly as old a family as the Schermerhorns. Once, when he had been very small and his mother had still been alive, he had overheard her saying to his father that the youngest De Peyster girl would one day make a very suitable daughter-in-law. He grinned to himself, remembering his father’s reaction.

  ‘A De Peyster?’ the grandson of an Hungarian farrier had queried scornfully. ‘Alexander will one day be the richest young man in the state. Possibly in the entire country. When it comes to marriage he won’t have to settle for the descendant of a Dutch patroon!’

  His father wanted the blood of European aristocracy to flow in his grandchildren’s veins and Alexander knew that when he was despatched at twenty-one on the obligatory Grand Tour of Europe, he was not expected to return empty-handed.

  ‘Not a daughter of Spanish or Italian nobility,’ his father had warned. ‘They’re all Roman.’ He had shuddered at the thought. Not even a princess would be acceptable to the upper echelons of New York, Dutch-descended Protestant society if she was a Roman. His own father had been born a Catholic and, in the utmost secrecy, had died a Catholic, but no-one knew that. Not even Alexander. ‘The daughter of an English aristocrat would be best,’ he had continued forcefully. ‘But don’t settle for anything less than the daughter of an earl.’

  Alexander had dutifully promised that, when the time came, he would ensure that his bride fulfilled all his father’s requirements. He kicked a stone with the toe of a hand-stitched calf-skin boot. At the moment marriage was the last thing he had on his mind. It was the wherefore of losing his irksome virginity that was his present pressing problem.

  He agilely avoided an omnibus as he crossed from Nineteenth Street to Eighteenth, side-stepping the droppings that the horse had left in its wake. The house on the corner of Eighteenth and Fifth belonged to August Belmont. He looked up at its excessively ornamented gilded gargoyles and gutters and grinned to himself. Belmont’s sexual proclivities were rumoured to be so excessive as to border on satyriasis. Belmont wouldn’t have had any trouble losing his virginity. He kicked another stone out of his way and into the busy thorough-fare. He was a Karolyis and he didn’t intend having any either.

  As he approached his family home he saw that visitors were expected. Red carpet had been rolled out over the porch steps of his home and across the courtyard into the street.

  ‘Mr William Hudson and Miss Genevre Hudson are expected, sir,’ Haines, the butler, told him when he enquired who was about to arrive.

  Alexander lost interest. William Hudson was an English railway king newly arrived in the city, whom his father had not yet met. His interest in him was more commercial than social and Alexander was surprised that a red carpet had been unrolled in his honour. He walked along it beneath a constellation of pear-shaped chandeliers and into the grand drawing-room.

  ‘Good,’ his father said peremptorily as he entered. ‘I want you to stay and meet Hudson.’

  Alexander suppressed a groan. He should have gone straight to his own wing of the house if he had wanted to avoid boredom. He thought of the two weeks’freedom stretching out in front of him and had the good grace to say dutifully, ‘Yes, Pa.’

  Hudson, when he arrived, proved to be a heavily built Yorkshireman with luxuriant mutton-chop whiskers. His daughter was thirteen, a quiet, mousy girl who sat demurely with her hands folded in her lap as tea was brought in.

  Within a very few minutes it became apparent that William Hudson had no time for the usual niceties of polite conversation and that the visit was not going to be as tedious as Alexander had imagined.

  ‘Politicians in London are watching events here very closely,’ Mr Hudson said without preamble to a startled Victor. ‘The Kansas-Nebraska act could be the beginning of the end for America. Every state to decide for itself whether it be a free state or a slave state, eh? Unless President Buchanan takes swift action America will be permanently divided and he will be the last President to preside over a united country.’

  ‘The finer nuances of our internal politics are difficult for outsiders to understand,’ Victor said stiffly, politeness disguising his annoyance. ‘No state has a constitutional right to secede from the Union and rumours that the slave states will take such action are just that. Rumours. Nothing will come of it.’

  ‘And when Buchanan’s term of office is at an end, what then?’ their Yorkshire visitor persisted, blithely unaware of the offence being aroused by his line of questioning. ‘What if the new Republican Party gains office? Their young leader was deeply opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska act, was he not?’

  ‘Their young leader stands no chance of ever being elected to the office of President,’ Victor riposted drily.

  William Hudson smiled. ‘I wouldn’t bank on that, Mr Karolyis. Any man who coins the phrase “a house divided against itself cannot stand” is a young man to watch.’

  Victor snorted. Alexander suppressed a smile of amusement at his father’s annoyance, and the subject changed from young Abraham Lincoln to the possibility as to whether or not specially designed sleeping compartments would be economically viable if attached to long-distance, night-running trains. Not
until the ending of the visit did the conversation again take an interesting turn.

  ‘The benefit of railway construction here, of course, is the great numbers of Irish immigrants available for labour,’ William Hudson said as he rose to take his leave. ‘From what I’ve been told of the conditions they live in, the poor devils must be deeply grateful for such work.’

  Victor smiled thinly. He had endured the misplaced remarks as to his country’s political stability. He had no intention of lowering himself by entering into a discussion on the Irish.

  ‘I really can’t understand why your City Fathers allow the extortion to continue,’ William Hudson was saying, still blithely unaware that he was committing a social faux pas of the greatest magnitude. ‘The sub-landlords who rent out the tenements and the land-holders who own the land on which they are built, should be brought to book. Incidents of cholera and yellow fever would then, soon fall. We have similar areas to the Five Points in London of course, Seven Dials and St Giles’s, but somehow diseased slums in a new, go-ahead country, such as America, seem far more reprehensible than they do in an old country which has been burdened with them from time immemorial.’

  Alexander’s gaze had accidentally fallen on Genevre Hudson. She gave him a small, embarrassed smile and he realized with a shock that she was well aware of her father’s many conversational gaffes. It was the first time she had impinged on his consciousness as being anything more than a boringly plain accessory to her father. He still thought her sadly plain and typical of the insipid English girls he had previously met socially, but there was intelligence as well as mortification in her eyes and he thought her possibly quite likeable.

  His father hadn’t replied to William Hudson’s last statement, but had merely begun to escort him from the drawing-room and towards the red-carpeted corridor beyond.

  Alexander perfectly understood his father’s inner fury. His Hungarian grandfather had bought up vast acres of land in the area now known as Five Points when he had still been a young man. His son had often declared that it had been one of his most judicious moves. What sub-landlords chose to do with the land was not a Karolyis problem, despite the attempts made by interfering do-gooders to make it their problem. Of all unfortunate subjects to raise in a Karolyis drawing-room, William Hudson had lit on the most unfortunate.

  As liveried footmen bowed the happily oblivious William and his agonized daughter out of the porticoed hall and into their waiting carriage, Victor spun apoplectically on his heel.

  ‘I want whoever ordered that carpet unrolled, dismissed!’ he yelled at the long-suffering Haines.

  Alexander grinned to himself as his father stormed off in the direction of his study. If Mr William Hudson had been hoping that afternoon tea with Victor Karolyis would be his entrée into New York high society, he was going to be a very disappointed man.

  Two days later, strolling through the crush that had gathered on the Long Island track, Charlie said a trifle nervously, ‘I’m not sure we’re going to get away with this, Alex. I thought no-one respectable ever came here, but I’ve already spotted old Henry Jay and Commodore Vanderbilt.’

  ‘Vanderbilt isn’t respectable,’ Alexander said dismissively.

  When his own grandfather had been busily buying up land, the even younger Cornelius Vanderbilt had been busy buying up ferries and steamships. Both men had made a fortune but, whereas the Karolyises were now regarded as Old Guard through their linking with the Schermerhorns, Vanderbilt was still regarded as being offensively nouveau riche – especially by the descendants of his old rival.

  ‘He knows a thing or two about horse-flesh though,’ Charlie said with grudging admiration. ‘It might be an idea to see what he’s putting his money on and to do the same.’

  Vanderbilt looked as if he had driven his own equipage to the meet. He was wearing the white top hat he habitually wore when playing the part of a charioteer, and dog-skin gloves. A very pretty, very flashily dressed, very young woman was clinging adoringly to his arm.

  ‘I’ll trust my own judgement, thank you very much,’ Alexander said, miffed that Charlie assumed Vanderbilt’s knowledge of horse-flesh was superior to his own. ‘You forget I’ve been brought up with horses at Tarna. I’m every bit as good a judge as old Vanderbilt.’

  Charlie made due apologies but didn’t look totally convinced. He looked wistfully after the Commodore as Alexander firmly led the way in the opposite direction. Vanderbilt’s gambling was legendary. It would have been fun to see which horse he fancied – and for how much.

  ‘Then tell me what you fancy,’ he said, itching to off-load some of the bills bulging in his inside jacket pocket. ‘Are you going to go for Colourful Dancer or …’ He paled as he saw the silver-haired, cigar-smoking figure directly in their path. ‘Land’s sakes!’ he hissed agitatedly. ‘It’s Uncle Henry!’

  His warning came too late for Alexander. He was sidestepping a couple of touts who were making a nuisance of themselves and the next thing he knew Charlie had taken to his heels and disappeared and the distinguished figure of Henry Schermerhorn III was bearing down on him.

  ‘What the devil are you doing here, young man? Why aren’t you at Tarna with your father?’ his distant relation demanded, furious at Victor Karolyis’s young whelp catching him so publicly rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi.

  Alexander ran a finger uncomfortably around the inside of his stiffly starched collar. The heat was stifling. He wondered wildly what would happen if he were to simulate a faint.

  ‘I … I … Pa’s racing trainer is thinking of buying Colourful Dancer and I wanted to see how she ran,’ he managed at last. ‘I’d take it as a great favour if you wouldn’t let on to Pa I was here. He doesn’t approve of my interest in horses.’

  Henry didn’t doubt the truth of his statement for a moment. He had never liked Victor Karolyis. The rest of society might have conveniently forgotten that the man’s father had been a peasant from some God-forsaken village in Eastern Europe, but Henry Schermerhorn III hadn’t. In Henry’s eyes it was only to be expected that such a man would lack a gentleman’s inborn love of the turf. It was obvious, however, that his son was of a different stamp.

  He had recovered his equilibrium now and he continued to stare at Alexander, much to Alexander’s increasing discomfiture. Despite Sandor Karolyis having being vulgar and impossibly ill-bred, Henry had always entertained a sneaking liking for him. He had been a man who had possessed enormous chutzpah and he, at least, had not possessed the cardinal sin of indifference where horse-flesh was concerned.

  He remembered the stories of how, when Karolyis had first bought Tarna, he had outraged the country by riding recklessly hard and bare-back, like a Magyar peasant. He also remembered how he had scandalized Mrs Roosevelt when, at a dinner party so formal that the footmen had worn powdered wigs and silken knee-breeches, he had excused himself from the sumptuously laden table and disappeared in the direction of the kitchens. When tracked down by his hostess, who had never before stepped foot in the nether regions of her home, Karolyis was found with a salami in his hand, a pearl-handled clasp knife in the other. His ability to cut himself one-handedly thick slice after slice was lost on his hostess. He had never been invited to the Roosevelt mansion again. Henry doubted that he had cared.

  It occurred to him that the boy before him was more like his grandfather than he was his father. There was the same careless nonchalance in his stance, the same go-to-the-devil recklessness in his dark eyes, the same effortless charm. Grudgingly Henry had to admit that, as he had liked the grandfather, so he felt himself warming towards the grandson.

  ‘Well, I do, my boy,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a royal sport and in the not too far future New York will have an American Jockey Club worthy of it.’

  He began to stroll towards the track, obviously expecting Alexander to fall into step beside him. Relieved at the amicable outcome of the meeting, Alexander did so.

  ‘The city needs a track where blooded horses can run under
gentlemen’s rules,’ Henry continued, avoiding a hawker selling pies of doubtful-looking quality. ‘I’ve already spoken to August Belmont and Leonard Jerome and William Travers about such a possibility.

  They are familiar with European clubs and tracks and know the kind of thing I have in mind.’

  Alexander nodded. Leonard Jerome was a notorious high liver who was reputed to stable his beloved horses in carpeted stalls fitted with hand-carved walnut panelling. Travers was his business partner. Together with Belmont they knew more about horse-flesh than the rest of New York put together. A Jockey Club with such a threesome at the helm would be a Jockey Club worth belonging to.

  As they pushed their way through the crowds to the course Alexander was aware of Charlie desperately trying to keep them in view. He grinned to himself. Henry’s reaction to discovering a Karolyis amid petty touts and ladies of light virtue would be far different to his reaction if he discovered a young Schermerhorn in such surroundings. Unless Charlie wanted the lambasting of his life he was just going to have to lie low.

  ‘Your father’s trainer could be right about Colourful Dancer,’ Henry was saying to him companionably. ‘Let’s take the risk.’

  Ten minutes later they were happily counting their considerable winnings, much to Charlie’s almost tearful chagrin.

  Henry was enjoying himself. Victor’s whelp was proving to be entertaining company. ‘You must come with me to Harlem Lane one day,’ he suggested, happily uncaring of Alexander’s youth and the impropriety of encouraging him to attend dubious race tracks and to mix with the city’s riff-raff.

  ‘I’d like that.’ Alexander was beginning to like old Henry. Every other Schermerhorn he had ever met, apart from Charlie, had been insufferably priggish. Henry was definitely not priggish. Underneath his very dignified exterior he was proving to be a lot of fun.