by Renée Rosen
Delia set her fountain pen down and reached over to squeeze her hand. She’d been so distraught over Marsh that she hadn’t stopped to consider the situation Albertine and the children were in. “Tell me how I can help.”
“Well, I was wondering if you would mind if the children and I came and stayed here with you. Just for a little while. They love you so and they love being here. I know you have Catherine here already, but if we could . . .”
There was only one answer. Delia smiled. “I think both Junior and Marsh would like that very much.”
Albertine leaned over and kissed Delia’s hand. “Thank you, Aunt Dell. My goodness, what would any of us do without you?”
• • •
Delia and Bertha were on the back porch at the Field mansion one summer day, enjoying a glass of sherry. It had been eight months since Marsh had died.
“We’re too young to be widows,” said Bertha. She was fifty-six. Delia had just turned fifty-two.
“Do you think you’ll ever remarry?” Delia asked.
Bertha laughed, running her fingertips along her pearl choker as if checking to make sure the gems were all there and accounted for. “I can’t imagine it. Can you?”
Delia shook her head. Soon they would have been celebrating their first wedding anniversary and there was something she needed to do. She turned to Bertha and said, “How would you feel about making a journey to St. Moritz with me?”
Soon the two socialites found themselves in the heart of the Swiss Alps. One afternoon she and Bertha were seated in a café, having coffee with two writers, Manuel and Alvaro. The Corviglia Mountain was in the background, towering over everything, and Delia pointed toward the peak and said, “I’d like to conquer that mountain.”
Manuel and Alvaro laughed. “You? A woman? Going mountaineering?”
“Why not?” she said, remembering the day she and Marsh had stood before that mountain, admiring its height, comparing their love affair to reaching the summit. She felt she owed it to him to see the top. “And I wouldn’t do it on foot. I’d drive.”
The writers laughed even harder. “Impossible. The mountain roads are crude at best. Even a man has never been able to reach the top by car.”
That was all Delia needed to hear. She had more of Marsh’s spirit in her than she’d suspected. And of course, Bertha was never one to back away from a challenge, either.
“Please, please,” Manuel and Alvaro begged the next day when they realized Delia and Bertha were serious about this. “It’s very dangerous. You could easily drive over the edge and that would be the end of you both.”
Several other people tried talking them out of it as well.
But the ladies’ minds were set.
If they’d waited they might have changed their minds, but two days later, they had an automobile and new motoring outfits complete with goggles and gloves.
With their guide map before them, Bertha said, “Well, there’s only one way to go and that’s up.”
And so, on the morning of September 16, 1906, Delia Spencer Caton Field sat at the controls while Bertha Palmer used the hand crank to start the motorcar before she climbed in next to Delia.
With Delia behind the wheel, they started on their journey. The local authorities had insisted on following behind them in a separate motorcar, though Delia and Bertha were not happy about it and made disparaging remarks about them each time they looked through the rearview mirror.
The scenery was breathtaking. They were surrounded by stone overhangs and pine forests that seemed to go on endlessly. As they continued on, the road was filled with surprises. Delia gripped the wheel tighter as unexpected sharp turns gave way to long winding stretches of road. All was fine for a quarter mile when suddenly, without warning, the gradual incline they were on turned into a straight upward climb. Delia gave it full throttle and then the grade eased and they found themselves chugging along again. The second motorcar was still behind them, keeping pace.
The higher up they drove, the more astonishing the views. The air looked gauzelike, an endless sheer cloud that enveloped them, and straight ahead were snowdrifts so deep, they collected like mountains all their own. Three-quarters of the way toward the summit, they met with the steepest incline yet. Delia willed the throttle on, but the machine coughed and sputtered and coughed some more before it died.
The two women turned to each other and had to laugh—what else was there to do? But then Delia got out of the motorcar and leaned against the hood. She folded her arms across her chest and pointed her chin up toward the summit. It looked so close at hand, yet she was still miles away.
She gazed toward the open sky and thought of Marsh, her Merchant Prince. Just as well I didn’t make it to the top, she thought to herself. It wouldn’t have been the same without you. Nothing is the same without you, Marsh.
• • •
Six weeks later Delia returned from Europe. She stepped onto the platform at Dearborn Station, watching the fall foliage come into view as the smoke and haze from the train began to clear away.
“Aunt Dell! Aunt Dell!” Catherine waved to her before she rushed to her side, wrapping her arms about her. “I’m so glad you’re home. I have so much to tell you.”
On the drive back to Prairie Avenue Catherine spoke endlessly about Albert Beveridge and how she planned to marry him with or without her mother’s approval. “But don’t tell my mother I said that.”
“Our secret,” Delia promised. She was happy for Catherine even though she knew Abby would be heartsick and that it would be up to her to reassure her sister that it wasn’t the end of the world. She would do it, too. Delia understood the power of an inconvenient, unconventional love that couldn’t be denied. One look in her niece’s eyes and she could see that Catherine understood that, too.
As they entered the Field mansion Delia was met with a chorus of voices.
“Surprise! Welcome home!”
Delia was caught off guard as Abby and Augustus, Albertine and the children circled around her, showering her with hugs. Spencer was there with Lurline Spreckels, along with Ethel and her husband, David Beatty. They were all gathered around her and she didn’t know who to speak to first. Her heart felt so big, so full, it couldn’t have held any more joy.
Still clustered close to her, they walked Delia into the dining room, where an elaborate table was set. As the smells of sautéed garlic and onions emanated from the kitchen, Delia realized how long it had been since she’d last eaten and yet she was too excited, too pleased to be bothered with something as trivial as food.
Everyone took their seats except for Ethel, who raised her glass of champagne. “To Aunt Dell,” she said. “Our matriarch has come home.” The glasses went up as the beams of light from the crystal chandelier played off the goblets.
Delia looked around the table and found herself moved to tears. She never thought of herself as the matriarch and yet what else could she have possibly been? For years she had provided for her sister’s family. More recently she’d looked after Albertine and her children, who were still living with her. Even Ethel, despite it all, now looked to Delia for motherly advice.
Though she’d never had children of her own, Delia realized that in her own way, she had become their matriarch, everyone’s mother. The house Marsh left to her was filled with family, and while it may not have been the way she’d planned it, she had children and grandchildren to enjoy. A gift to her from Marsh and, in the end, the most valuable one he’d ever given her.
Just then she realized something else. When Nannie died, and again when Arthur passed away, she felt their ghosts all around, lingering everywhere. Their sense of presence had frightened her, but now she felt Marsh’s life force all around and it was like she’d swallowed the sun, its heat and light filling her soul. As she looked around the table, she had the sensation that Marsh was there with her and she realized that
she did have all she had ever wanted.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
What the Lady Wants is a work of fiction, but I did base it largely on the facts of Marshall Field’s and Delia Caton’s lives. I did most of my research for the book at the Chicago History Museum and the Newberry Library in Chicago. I tried to be faithful to the important historical facts of their lives, but many of the events in the novel as well as the characters’ motivations are my suppositions. The Fields and Catons were extremely private people and the truth of their full story will never be known. In the interests of crafting an entertaining novel, I took some creative liberties with their stories and I’d like to clarify the fact from fiction here.
Delia and Marshall’s relationship was without question a great scandal for the better part of three decades. It was in fact widely rumored that the two had built a secret lovers’ tunnel that connected their properties, though I found no evidence that such a tunnel ever existed. While they were generally known to be lovers, and there’s a record of Delia’s relationship with Marsh’s children, I created the details of their intimate lives. There’s no evidence that she was ever pregnant by Marshall Field, although it is true that Delia Caton never had children.
It was also well noted that Marshall and Nannie Field had a very tumultuous relationship and as a result Nannie spent long periods of time in Europe with the children. Though it was quite clear that she had health issues and suffered from migraines, her addiction to laudanum and her stay at the sanitarium are the workings of my imagination. Back in the late 1800s there was no diagnosis for what ailed Nannie Field, but according to The Marshall Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty by Axel Madsen, it was chronic fatigue syndrome.
As for the Catons’ marriage, very little was ever recorded. The nature of their relationship here is the work of fiction based upon a study of photographs and documents I found at the Newberry Library, which houses the archives of Delia’s niece, Catherine Eddy Beveridge. Based upon my findings, I speculated that Delia and Arthur were friends above all else and that Arthur was aware of his wife’s affair with Marshall Field. It should be noted that my portrayal of his acceptance of it is a product of my imagination; there’s no record of his private thoughts concerning his wife’s long affair. According to The Chronicle of Catherine Eddy Beveridge: An American Girl Travels into the Twentieth Century by Albert J. Beveridge III and Susan Radomsky, Marshall Field often traveled with Delia and Arthur and was very much a fixture in their lives.
Arthur Caton, for reasons never disclosed, did commit suicide at the Waldorf Astoria in 1905. My portrayal of him as a homosexual is not based on any historical evidence. Paxton Lowry is a fictitious character.
Above all, Marshall Field was instrumental in shaping the Chicago we know today. In addition to developing State Street and his retail empire, he was also an early investor in Charles Yerkes’s cable cars. By insisting that they continuously circle around his store, he created the famous Chicago Loop.
It’s also true that he played a key role in the Haymarket Affair, which was the result of friction between the labor movement wanting an eight-hour workday (among other things) and the capitalists. What started as a peaceful socialist movement turned into a violent uprising and ultimately the deadly riot at Haymarket Square when the anarchists joined their cause. Marshall Field was the one holdout who refused to grant clemency to the convicted men despite the lack of evidence. Also, the anarchists’ march on Prairie Avenue actually took place on Thanksgiving Day 1884, not 1881 as I have it here. Lastly, it should be noted that the Haymarket Affair could be and has been the subject of many books in and of itself and that what I’ve presented here is really just a snapshot of that story.
The same is true of my portrayal of the 1893 Columbian Exposition World’s Fair. I also found no specific evidence of Delia’s involvement with the fair. While Bertha Palmer was the chairwoman for the Board of Lady Managers, for the sake of this novel, I took the liberty of making Delia Caton her assistant. Marshall Field and other Chicago businessmen such as George Pullman, Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift were extremely instrumental in bringing the fair to Chicago.
The secondary characters in this novel were all real figures except for Sybil and Lionel Perkins, Penelope Lowry and, as noted above, Paxton. Harry Selfridge, the subject of the PBS Masterpiece Classic series Mr. Selfridge, worked for Marshall Field for twenty-five years before the two parted ways. When Harry moved to London, he established his version of Marshall Field & Company, known as Selfridges.
Marshall Field Jr.’s death to this day remains a mystery. It was believed that he was shot in the Everleigh Club, Chicago’s most famous brothel, and that his body was later moved to his home. Based on various newspaper articles that appeared in the New York Times as well as Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul by Karen Abbott, it was obvious that the family was involved in covering up the incident, claiming that he accidentally shot himself. Again, in both sources cited above, Vera Scott did come forward years later confessing to the crime, but again, her guilt was never proved.
I relied heavily upon a number of sources in the writing of this book. I would like to note that the excerpt from the Chicago Tribune article after the Field & Leiter fire in 1877 is as it appeared in Give the Lady What She Wants: The Story of Marshall Field & Company, by Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan.
For more about Marshall Field’s and Chicago’s history, I highly recommend the following:
Give the Lady What She Wants: The Story of Marshall Field & Company, by Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1952.
The Marshall Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty, by Axel Madsen. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
The Chronicle of Catherine Eddy Beveridge: An American Girl Travels into the Twentieth Century, by Albert J. Beveridge III and Susan Radomsky. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2005.
Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837–1920, by Perry R. Duis. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, by Donald L. Miller. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
The Jewel of the Gold Coast: Mrs. Potter Palmer’s Chicago, by Sally Sexton Kalmbach. Chicago: Ampersand, 2009.
Remembering Marshall Field’s, by Leslie Goddard. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2011.
Chicago’s Historic Prairie Avenue, by William H. Tyre. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2008.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson. New York: Random House, 2003.
Chicago by Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker’s Guide to the Paris of America, edited by Paul Durica and Bill Savage. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2013.
Bertha Honoré Palmer, by Timothy A. Long. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2009.
The Letters of Pauline Palmer: A Great Lady of Chicago’s First Family, by Eleanor Dwight. Easthampton, MA: M.T. Train/Scala Books, 2005.
In addition to all these, I highly recommend touring the Glessner House, which still stands at 1800 South Prairie Avenue and is representative of the grand homes from Chicago’s Gilded Age.
Photo by Charles Osgood
Renée Rosen is the author of Dollface and Every Crooked Pot. She lives in Chicago where she is at work on her next novel coming from Penguin/New American Library in November of 2015.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Do you find it acceptable that Marshall and Delia pursued their love affair? Or do you think they were wrong for going outside their marriages? In other words, is adultery ever justified?
2. There’s a twenty-year age difference between Delia and Marshall. How do you account for Delia’s attraction to him? Was it his money? His power? Or was it something else? Do you think relationships between older men and younger women were more com
mon in the late nineteenth century than they are now?
3. Delia’s greatest desire was to be a mother and at one point she sets out to have a child with Marsh that she, Marsh and Arthur will go on to raise. Had she not lost the baby, how do you think this arrangement would have worked out? What do you think Nannie’s reaction would have been? What about Arthur’s parents? Do you think the children she “had” by the end of the book ultimately fulfilled her desire for motherhood?
4. What do you think about how Delia handled her critics who spread rumors and blackballed her from high society? What should she have done differently, if anything? What do you think of the different reactions society had to Delia versus Marsh?
5. During the late 1800s a woman could not easily seek a divorce and so Delia chose to stay with Arthur. Do you think she did that solely out of obligation or out of genuine love and friendship? What would you have done if put in the same situation?
6. Loyalty is a big theme in this book. Delia is certainly loyal to Arthur and Marshall, but can you cite other examples in the book? Do you think this is a strength or weakness of hers? Can you think of an instance or instances where you disagree with Delia’s sense of devotion?
7. Delia and Marshall Field were part of a very elite social group known as the Prairie Avenue set. Did you find their sense of privilege more enchanting or annoying? What parts did you especially like? What parts did you not like?
8. Had you been alive during the Great Chicago Fire, would you have stayed and helped rebuild the city, or would you have moved on and possibly returned after the city had come back?
9. The Haymarket Riots, which pitted the labor organizers against the capitalists and resulted in a deadly riot, marked a very pivotal time in our nation’s history. Delia was clearly opposed to Marshall’s decision to execute the accused men. Do you think she should have left him over this? How could she defend him to others when she was so strongly opposed to his position? Was this another case of loyalty and do you think she should have stood by him?