The Harlot’s Pen

by Claudia H Long

  Violetta Strone sighed and reached into her leather bag. She pulled out a pamphlet. Here it comes, Kate thought. The suffrage pamphlet, the moral guide, the Save Your Soul leaflet. Miss Strone handed it to Kate, who took it reluctantly. The Rape of the Working Woman, by V. Strone. Kate looked at Miss Strone. “You are the writer?” Miss Strone nodded, her color rising more. She was almost pretty when she flushed, Kate thought. She looked at the pamphlet in her hand and unwillingly opened it. It seemed to be a set of verses, perhaps ten pages long. Words like rapine and violation jumped out at her. “Quite a title. Guaranteed to open minds and hearts.”

  Miss Strone looked up sharply. “It does so indeed. And the Petaluma Argus published much of it. It tells the truth of the life of a woman forced to work at the mercy of men. That life is not easy.” Miss Strone had the decency to look embarrassed at Kate’s laugh. “But you are a powerful woman, Miss Lombard. Powerful with connections to powerful men. Men who make or break the conditions of women’s work. Such conditions can be changed.”

  “And you want to change them here? Under my roof?” Kate laughed, her mirth brittle and harsh. “Go, Miss Strone. Take your poetry with you. And leave my salon alone.”

  Miss Strone gathered herself up. “Please. At least read it. And think about what I ask. I would only want to work, like any other denizen of this salon, and be entertaining. I would be ever so careful not to disturb the peace of your establishment.”

  “Peace! You have clearly no idea what you are talking about!”

  “It is likely you are right, Miss Lombard. But I can only know if you allow me to learn. I cannot write in ignorance. If the story of a prostitute is only presented through the judgmental lens of moralizing men, then the crusade that has shut the houses of San Francisco will continue unabated. The closing of houses throws women into the streets at the mercy of the criminal class, or floods the cheapened labor force, earning pittance at the cannery and the sweatshop!”

  Miss Strone gasped for breath after her impassioned speech, but Kate only raised an eyebrow. “I am staying at the inn off Linden Street, close to here,” Miss Strone murmured. “Please think about it. Keep the pamphlet.”

  Miss Strone stood up and brushed past Kate as she left the cool shade of the house. But she looked over her shoulder one last time, just as Kate looked up from reading her pamphlet. Though their eyes met, Kate did not acknowledge Miss Strone, as she was drawn back into the rhythmic verse before her.

  * * * *

  Well, that could not have gone worse, Violetta thought as she hurried along Solano Avenue. She felt her cheeks burn as she recalled Miss Lombard’s disdain. “You, work for me? I’m afraid you have no idea what nonsense you’re speaking.” And that dog—he reminded her of a giant, gray rat.

  The dusty street widened, and the buildings on Solano Avenue became more numerous as Violetta approached her inn. The wide, shaded porch looked inviting, with its scattering of woven wicker rockers and low tables, and a glass of lemonade would have been very welcome, but Violetta walked quickly past the stooped man at the receiving desk and straight up the broad staircase to her room. She shut the door behind her and breathed a sigh of frustration. First she took off her straw hat, then loosened the collar of her dress, now damp with sweat, and fanned herself with the hat. The little breeze she could create didn’t do much to cool her, as the heat came from within.

  She had had such high hopes for the encounter. She had assured herself that she had a fail-proof plan, and yet she had not managed it well. Once again, she had gone off half-cocked, without thinking through her strategy. Relying on her beauty, her quick wit, and her innate intelligence had gotten her far in her youth, but now as a woman nearing thirty, she needed more. And it got her nowhere with the madam of a salon. Surely she should have anticipated that.

  Planning, careful strategy, Miss Bary had emphasized the need for these above all. Knowing the enemy, the stakes, the route to a favorable outcome, Violetta had disregarded all of these lessons. Miss Bary had worked for two weeks in a cannery just to be able to speak with authority on the labor conditions for women there. Violetta had only read a few old newspaper articles on the pitch of the do-gooders urging the prostitutes off the streets and into factories, articles obviously deeply meaningless to her in her quest.

  Violetta closed her eyes. In the weeks after meeting with Mr. Older, she had tried to consider all of the angles of the absurd task she had undertaken. Years ago she had been left at the altar, hiding a shame that could ruin her. Then she had lived in sin with a man who had fled to Argentina when the opportunity presented itself. Now she was hoping to masquerade as a prostitute in order to write the definitive series that would cement her reputation—but whether as an immoral fool or as a serious journalist remained to be seen.

  She snorted with disgust. What blinders she had worn for the past month that even allowed her to consider such an assignment? She imagined Fremont Older leaning back in his chair, laughing in amusement that she would be willing to become a whore—a whore!—to write an article.

  And yet, in her heart there was a part of her that relished the idea, the same part that was excited to flout the marriage laws in the name of revolution, that had gleefully allowed her fiancé privileges that no sane woman would have allowed… Her heart was excited, but her head mocked her heart and reminded her that if she succeeded, or if she failed, she would have completed her ruin nonetheless.

  She had committed herself to this adventure, and it had to work. After all, her father had died for championing the rights of women, and if she couldn’t convince Spanish Kitty to take her on, how could she even think of persuading her high-rolling readers to her cause?

  She sat alone at her little table, a candle lighting her dinner of boiled meat and a lumpy but delicious dish of cornmeal and little, hot, green peppers. The spiciness made her drink more of the landlord’s fine ale than she was accustomed to, and she rose a little woozily from her table at meal’s end. She dreaded the slow climb back to her room in the fading light of early summer, unwilling to face the heat of the second floor. Sonoma was far enough from the San Francisco Bay to have real summers, not the foggy coolness that June in San Francisco always brought, and Violetta had long forgotten how to survive in anything other than a brisk, salt air breeze.

  Instead, she walked out onto the porch and took a wicker rocking chair that was unoccupied, next to a dozing woman with gray tendrils escaping her bun in the heat. As she rocked gently she thought about what Fremont Older had told her about Kate Lombard, Spanish Kitty. She had been a fancy girl in San Francisco, but about ten years ago she had moved up to Sonoma, and opened her salon, or Resort, as she called it, in El Verano, near the town of Sonoma. She was as beautiful as Fremont Older had suggested, as tall as Violetta, and according to him, she had entertained every important man in the northern half of the state of California. The gracious house, the exotic dog, the careless housedress of meticulously soft weave, all spoke of influence and success.

  She thought of Sam, now certainly in Argentina, where he hoped to make a real fortune, separate from the perfectly adequate maintenance his family’s wealth and his position at the Nathan-Dohrmann department stores provided. Stores that he maintained treated their workers as well as necessary, and no better than they needed. Stores that hired more apprentices than was legal, so they could pay less than the paltry minimum wage she had railed against last Christmas.

  She tried to imagine Argentina. It would be hot there, she thought, perhaps as hot as Sonoma. Buenos Aires was said to be a boomtown, greatly resembling San Francisco with its glittering wealth, grinding poverty, and a world-class seaport that brought money, sailors, whores, and murderers together in a salty stew. She wondered how Sam would get on there, and for a moment she felt a pang of longing for him. Then she remembered his slaps, his disdain, his contempt. “You’re a dreamer, and have no concept of what the world is all about. Full of crazy ideas, but at least you’re too inconstant t
o do any real harm.” He had let those federal goons take her away without protest. She could not wish him well.

  Before going to bed, she fingered the keys she had taken from the old jail, now talismanic in their importance. She closed her fingers around them, closed her eyes tight. This had to work.

  * * * *

  “As one of my constituents, I think I should tell you that there seems to be considerable unrest about pawnbrokers. I enclose a bill which is introduced in the house.” Henry Lyon to Abe Cohen.

  Kate looked towards the door, but despite its many openings and closings that evening, Miss Strone did not appear. Kate knew an unescorted woman would never venture out in the evening, and certainly not to a salon, but there was something queer about that tall, dark-haired woman, something unsettling that made Kate leery of her and kept her wondering if she would arrive, inappropriately and unannounced, to press her suit for employment. No other petitioner had ever showed up at the front door clutching a poem.

  “A little quiet tonight, my dear,” Henry Lyon said, running his fingers along the seam of her sleeve. Kate smiled at him. He was such a dear man, undemanding, kind, and generous. “That’s better. Don’t want to see my little Kitty sad.”

  Kate metaphorically squared her shoulders. Undemanding or not, the gentlemen who came to her Resort came to be entertained, understood, and petted, not to look at a sour-faced, worried woman. Not that she was worried herself, of course, but those verses stayed in her mind. Miss Strone had written some very powerful words.

  “Of course not, bear cub,” she replied. “Let me get you a cordial.” Kate turned to catch the eye of Samantha, who nodded and quickly poured Henry a crystal glass full of the amber liquid. The new laws prohibiting the sale of liquor were a running joke in Spanish Kitty’s Salon, and the machinations of the government, far away in Washington, had little effect on Kate’s private club. “The harvest was good this year with our boys home from the Great War,” she remarked, taking a glass of cordial for herself. Her own vineyards stretched over several acres, not a mile from her Resort, and her small distillery produced enough for her to entertain her exclusive company.

  “And the cordial is remarkably good, if lacking in whiskey flavor,” Henry said teasingly. Though well placed in the government of the State himself, he had no interest in enforcing the Amendment or honoring the Volstead Act. “Did I tell you, Kitty, that I had the most remarkable letter today from Los Angeles? It appears that one Jew, a Mr. Cohen, has a fat finger in a larger pie, one of the most despicable pies in the state—a pawnbroker. I believe I mentioned this before?”

  Kitty nodded, and made her interested face. She furrowed her black, arching brows slightly, parted her lips appealingly, and gazed at Henry Lyon as he spoke. He indeed had mentioned his hatred of pawnbrokers often, and his odd liberal views on Labor as well. She thought of Miss Strone. Here was someone that she would fancy, only to discover that he was far and away beyond her understanding. She shook her head, thinking of Miss Strone’s foolishness.

  “No? You disagree, my lovely?”

  Kate caught herself. She had not heard the last part of Henry’s discourse. “Oh heavens, Henry, not at all. I simply am amazed at the brazenness of some people!”

  Henry Lyon smiled. “You are sharp, my dear. Brazenness is not a feature you would be unfamiliar with. Indeed, I was brazen in writing to Mr. Cohen, and even more so in encouraging the Committee to back the bills in the house that will clamp down on some of these pawnbrokers’ excesses.”

  “And so, shall Mr. Cohen and his brethren desist from pawn-brokering?”

  Henry Lyon leaned back and laughed. “For heaven’s sake! Not at all! Kitty, what is it with you tonight? Have you lost your intelligence to some affair of the heart?”

  “Heaven forbid, Henry, my bear cub. You have my heart, my soul, and my mind—at least tonight!” She raised her glass to him and drank. “I was only worried because without pawnbrokers, where will the hard up go for loans? No bank would credit them, nor indeed would I!”

  “Naturally, Kitty. Have no fear. I will apprise you of the results of my brazenness, as you call it. I am headed to Los Angeles tomorrow and will call on friend Cohen myself. I will say, though, that I personally have guaranteed many a grocery bill for the hard up, as you call them, those struggling families, especially in war time, and have yet to have to pay a bill myself. They have always risen to their word.” Henry Lyon was indeed known for his generosity and would hand a scullery maid a dollar as quickly as most would pinch her bottom. Though he indulged in that as well. It was fortunate, thought Kate, that he did enjoy both a round bottom and a generous purse. It was men like Henry that kept her Resort booming.

  * * * *

  The sun was well up the following morning when Violetta made her way to the inn’s dining room. A Mexican woman with a long braid served her coffee and a sweet roll crisscrossed in a checkerboard pattern with brown and white sugars. She had spent an uneasy night, neither awake nor asleep, reliving her foolishness.

  Sam was right. She was impractical and foolish. It must run in the family, she thought. Her father, who had so bravely ruled for a poor piece-work seamstress, had never expected to die for his opinion. And his decision was overturned two years later on appeal. What permanent change could she bring? She felt empty, abandoned, unmarried, unloved, and a fool to boot. The tears started, wetting her pillow, leaving her puffy-eyed and headachy in the morning.

  Why was it that darkness allowed all of one’s failings to materialize before one’s sleepless eyes, she wondered, and every detail of every mishap could replay with faultless accuracy before the cringing and unwilling memory? Memories fresh enough or virulent enough to make her squirm with shame or cry with frustration.

  She was not at her best, then, when a boy of twelve or so stopped her in the foyer of the inn with an impudent little whistle.

  “Hey, miss!” he said, almost blocking her way. “You Miss Strone?”

  Violetta blinked at him a second, then nodded.

  “Well, here’s a note from Mrs. Kate for you,” he said and winked. He waited. She realized he was waiting for a coin, but having none on her person, and not wanting to go up to her room and back down again, she nodded and with a murmured thanks turned away. “Cheap-fisted tart,” the boy said and dashed from the room before the old man at the desk could rise from his rocker to chastise him.

  With shaking hands, Violetta opened the letter. “You may call on me at your pleasure. Kate Lombard.” She folded it in pieces and clutched it tightly as she remounted the steps. Success was more terrifying than failure.

  * * * *

  Miss Strone is late. A very undesirable sign, likely the result of a soft life. Kate smiled grimly. She was unused to a petitioner for employment who lacked the immediate, grinding need to work. A soft life some had. But her reply note had been unambiguous. “Thank you. I am grateful and will call on you this afternoon at half past three.” The clock had chimed the hour and had now rung the half.

  It had proven an unexpectedly interesting night. Henry Lyon was always a treat, and she enjoyed the high regard he had for her intelligence, but more than that, he had, of his own accord, started the topic of women factory workers himself. Of course, labor disputes were all the rage again, with the men back from the war and eager to keep the advancements they had reaped before leaving. Unless one was dead, Kate thought, one would have heard of the unions, their struggles, and influence. Some men, like Mr. Hearst, who often stopped in for a visit on his way back from the Grove, were often angered by the demands of the workers. Others, Mr. Older, for example, championed the workers in their newspapers. But Henry Lyon, now he was an enigma, and though he worked in what some might think was an underhanded way, he seemed genuine in his interest in working women. And by that, she quipped, he meant factory women, not women in her line of work.

  “I love women in your kind of work, Kitty,” he’d replied, “but you haven’t unionized yet, and
I pray you never do, for you earn far above the minimum wage!”

  “So you believe the factory women are abused?” Kate had asked.

  “If giving women the vote isn’t abusing them, then giving them work isn’t either. But to pay them to steal work from men is a crime.”

  “But Henry, darling, what woman would work long hours on her feet, in the heat of a cannery, just for the pleasure of it? Surely she would only do it if she needed to feed her children, and if she needed to feed the children it was because either she had no man, or he couldn’t make enough to support the family.”

  “You sound like Valeska, Kitty! Next I will find you working on my committees!”

  Kate had heard the name Valeska before, but had never paid it any mind, except, of course, to remember it. A good companion remembered all the names the gentlemen dropped—and not just to make better conversation. Sometimes a remembered name gave early warning to trouble.

  Kate looked around her parlor. The lateness of the hour ensured that it was tidier than when Miss Strone had appeared yesterday. By four, Spanish Kitty and her kittens were ready to receive the earliest callers, although it was generally quiet until the evening. In June, with the late sunset, revelers would enjoy entertainment of the lighter sort on her wide verandah and move into the parlor when the stars began to shine. Musicians could play on the porch well into the night, and cards and dice could be thrown by lamplight. Only upstairs, where the lovers partook of the most heated forms of enchantment, was off-limits until eight.

  Kate had figured out long ago, when she opened her first house in San Francisco, that unlike a common harlot, a real courtesan was only available for loving at chosen times. Convenience was for those in less demand. That thought struck her again now, as she waited for Miss Strone. Kate was not the one who was usually kept waiting. Her potential welcome began to chill.