Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  In truth Negroes often receive worse treatment in the North than they do in the South because of ignorance and fear. In New York a black man cannot vote unless he owns two hundred and fifty dollars in property. That rule doesn’t apply to whites. But then I do not need to tell you such things, dear Matty, for you have always been a champion of the poor and the oppressed regardless of the colour of their skin, gender, or religion.

  It is being said that the Union Army can easily overthrow the Confederacy, they claim we have more wealth, weapons, roads and railways, and a strong navy, while the Southern states are almost bankrupt, and the cotton their only real asset. This is all very true. But I know that in any battle the strongest opponent is the one who truly believes in his cause. The South have strong leaders, and utter conviction that their cause is one of honour, and I believe they will fight to the death to uphold it.

  Today I heard that young men are pouring in all over the country to recruit for the Union, just as they are here in Kansas. Few of them are really inspired by glory, the ideals, nor the flags and bugles, only the thirteen dollars a month, and perhaps the adventure. They firmly believe it will all be over in ninety days.

  Knowing Southerners as I do, I doubt the rebels can be subdued so quickly. I wonder too how we can hope that our men will remain steadfast to a cause when they experience what war really means, they’ll find living conditions far worse than those they left behind in the slums of the cities, the rations poor and death a real possibility.

  But enough of this my love, for you do not want to hear such pessimistic thoughts. One certainty has come out of this situation, and that is if I have to fight against my old neighbours and friends, I will never be able to return to Virginia again when this is over. I shall leave the army for good then, and come back to you for always. So pray as I do that it will be a short battle, with few casualties.

  I have your picture close to my heart, I kiss it each night and morning. Write soon with all your cheering news of your girls, and tell Sidney I will be back to be godfather to his child as I promised, though I can’t say when just yet. I have a feeling young Peter will be desperate to join up, for he is as hot-blooded as I was at the same age. If you cannot persuade him out of it, at least make sure he comes here and joins my regiment, for perhaps then I can try and keep him safe for you.

  Remember that I love you, my darling. My body might be here in Kansas and my mind on war, but my heart is with you and will be for ever.

  Yours always, James.

  Matilda wiped away the tears coursing down her cheeks, folded his letter and tucked it into the bodice of her dress. She bit into her bottom lip to prevent herself crying any more and tried to cheer herself as she had often done before by simply looking at the view from her window.

  It was a beautiful May morning, with warm sunshine and the lightest of breezes, and the view of the bay over the rooftops was as beautiful and peaceful as ever, busy with ships and fishing boats. But even as she admired it, she was reminded that everything which was good about this city she’d come to love had only been achieved by long, hard battles to fight the evil within it.

  She thought back to the days of the Vigilantes. Sam Brannan, the man who first proclaimed the gold in the American river, had organized a band of men to take the city’s lawlessness into their own hands. In the absence of a strong police force, they had targeted the gamblers, arsonists, street ruffians, ballot-box stuffers, crooked politicians and real and suspected criminals. Some they hanged, others got a good beating, and many more were banished from the city. In their heyday of the mid-’50s, they had 4,000 infantrymen armed with muskets and thirty cannons, and they operated with military discipline from Fort Gunnybags, their headquarters in Sacramento Street. Matilda could still vividly recall the excitement in the city in the summer of ’56 when the Vigilantes demanded that the authorities should hand over to them two murderers called Cora and Casey, and took them to Fort Gunnybags for trial. They were found guilty and hanged from the second-floor windows.

  The Vigilantes had disbanded later that same year. Maybe their organization had been flawed, but they had moved the city out of the old boom-town era, shown the worst of the rascals that their presence would not be tolerated, and created the beginnings of a civilized, real city. Later, in ’59, silver strikes in the Comstock Lode brought welcome new prosperity to the city, but there was none of the madness Matilda remembered in the times of the gold.

  Yet there was still so much more that needed to be done. Maybe for the vast majority of its citizens San Francisco was becoming a clean and ordered place, with pleasant suburbs, good schools, colleges, theatres and libraries, yet the ‘Barbary Coast’ and all its obscenities were still thriving. It would remain that way too, for most people turned a blind eye as long as it didn’t touch their lives and brought extra revenue to the city.

  Sometimes Matilda felt that the task she’d set herself to help girls escape from prostitution, and keep away from it, was like trying to empty a huge bath of water with only a thimble. Over the last five years she and Dolores had been instrumental in getting only five brothel keepers prosecuted for procuring underage girls. They had rescued a total of thirty-three children, and given temporary care and shelter to over 200 girls. But that was only skimming across the surface of a morass filled with unfortunates they could never reach.

  Of the first eight girls to come to Folsom Street, Fern was still with her, acting as housekeeper in a working girls’ boarding-house Matilda had founded. Mai Ling had married the owner of a restaurant, Suzy was a maid for a wealthy family in Rincon Hill. Maria and Angelina worked as seamstresses, Dora and Bessie were both in service. All of them dropped in to see Matilda and Dolores from time to time, and offered friendship and encouragement to the new girls they found there.

  Ruth was the only casualty of those first few girls. That haunted look had never left her, and shortly after taking a job as a kitchen maid, her body had been washed up on the beach. As the police could find no signs of violence it was believed she had taken her own life.

  Of the other girls Matilda had given shelter to, around sixty per cent were still in the same employment she’d found them, thirty per cent had either married, flitted from job to job, become reunited with family, or moved away to another city. She believed that about five per cent of the total number might have been drawn back into prostitution, for she had never seen or heard from them since.

  It wasn’t possible to keep track of the girls helped by the employment bureau. Unless they returned to her at some stage, they had no real reason to keep in touch. But as they were mostly capable, smart girls who had friends and family she doubted many of them had fallen by the wayside.

  The Jennings Bureau made a small profit now, but it was never intended as a money-making scheme anyway. She had found work for over 2,000 girls, and perhaps managed to influence some businessmen into thinking females had equal brainpower to men, and even treating employees fairly. But she couldn’t sit back now, war in its way was yet another opportunity, and if she didn’t use it, someone else would.

  Thinking about this, she got a note-pad and pencil from her desk. What did an army need?

  She made a list. Food, weapons, ammunition, uniforms, tents, horses, hospitals and nurses. She frowned at the images the last two threw up. She had no doubt that Tabitha would feel compelled to break off from her studies to nurse. Her desire to be a doctor had always been tempered by the need to help the sick rather than based on personal advancement or glory – in that she was very like her father. Should she write to her now and tell her she must stay at the college?

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she said aloud. ‘She’s twenty-one, the same age you were when Lily died, and if she wants to help the wounded, then she should not be prevented.’

  Tabitha had gone to England to visit her aunt and uncle when she finished at school. Matilda had held hopes that her relatives might be able to help her get into a university there to take a degree in medicine.
But sadly the English medical profession was still firmly against women joining their ranks, and her doctor uncle had recommended she go to the medical college in Ohio because there was no such prejudice there. Yet the trip to England had given Tabitha a great deal, she had got to meet her remaining relatives and discovered a great deal more about her mother as a young girl. It had also made her see she was an American now, and it was to this country that she owed her allegiance.

  Matilda looked at her list again. She would go and see Henry Slocum later, he would know how people had to go about getting government contracts, he might even know of any local businessmen putting in tenders. They’d need extra staff, and with so many men rushing off to join up, there would be vacancies women might be able to fill. If she had to wait for James until this war was over, she might as well do something to help with it.

  Matilda often regretted that she had always followed Dolores’ instructions for avoiding pregnancy. She was thirty-five now, and by the time James came back to her, maybe it would be too late to have a child. Often the girls she and Dolores helped had a baby, and each time she held one in her arms, she yearned desperately for her own. It was a feeling that never went away entirely, just as she would never be free of the pain of losing Amelia.

  It was like a tidal wave that came unexpectedly. She would flounder in it, sometimes become so deeply immersed she thought she’d drown. Then it would go away again, and she’d allow herself to think it was gone for good. But it never was.

  Dolores always seemed to know when it struck her. She would reach out for her hand and squeeze it, rarely saying anything. Matilda often wondered how Dolores knew these things, but then she was a truly remarkable woman in all ways.

  Matilda drove herself up to Rincon Hill later to see Henry. As she left, Treacle jumped up beside her in the gig. He was growing old now, his black fur tinged with grey, and mostly he lay in the sunshine sleeping, but he loved rides in the gig as much as she did. She thought perhaps it was because he remembered their wagon, and it pleased her to think an animal could be nostalgic, just like a human.

  Few things had given her as much pleasure as buying the gig. She loved the red and black wheels, the smell of the red leather upholstery, and the sense of freedom it gave her. Star, the chestnut mare, was calm and gentle, yet she liked nothing better than a good fast gallop on a clear road.

  Henry’s house was an imposing one, double-fronted with pointed gables and five balustraded steps up to the front door. Matilda drove into the drive and ordered Treacle to stay with the gig, and as so often when she came here, she reflected on how odd it was that Henry, the first person to help her in San Francisco, had remained her staunch friend, while Alicia was still as distant.

  Alicia seemed content at last, she had her bridge afternoons, and her endless dinner parties, and now and again she stirred herself with some charity work. Even after Henry became a partner in London Lil’s, and Alicia benefited from the profits they made, she still couldn’t bring herself to admit to having a share in a saloon, and would never dream of inviting Matilda to one of her smart parties. Yet she did collect up parcels of clothing for Matilda’s girls, and she did persuade her snobby friends to use the Jennings Bureau when they wanted domestic help. And she didn’t mind Matilda calling on her husband.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Matty,’ Henry said with great warmth as the maid showed her into his study. ‘Funny that you should come by today, I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Something nice I hope,’ she laughed. ‘With all the talk of war, I could do with a lift.’

  ‘My thoughts of you are always nice ones,’ he said gallantly, and complimented her on her pink silk dress and bonnet. ‘I don’t understand why when all my other friends are growing grey and lined, you seem to have found the secret of eternal youth,’ he said.

  ‘You are an old flatterer,’ she smiled. She didn’t know how old Henry was, but she guessed he must be sixty, and his once dark beard and the frill of hair around his bald head had gone snow-white in the past few years. He was very fat now, like a round barrel, but his mind was as sharp as ever. ‘But I’ll get straight to the point about why I called. I want to discuss government contracts for the war.’

  He laughed, and offered her a seat. ‘Surely you aren’t thinking of moving into gun-running!’

  Matilda told him what she’d been thinking about. ‘I just want to steal a march on others,’ she admitted. ‘It struck me that uniforms must be required, and foodstuffs too. I want jobs for my girls.’

  Henry said he thought the uniforms would all be made in the East, and he doubted it would be practical to supply food owing to the vast distance. ‘But I’ll keep my nose to the ground, and there will be vacancies with so many men enlisting,’ he said, then went on to ask about James.

  One of the most comforting things about her friendship with Henry was that he truly cared about her happiness. In their early years as partners he had introduced her to many men he hoped would be prospective husbands. He had given that up once he saw James was the man she wanted, and perhaps because of his own loveless marriage, he sincerely hoped that one day they’d find permanent happiness together.

  Matilda told him about James’s letter and confided his dilemma at being forced to fight against his own people.

  ‘There will be many in his position, I fear,’ Henry said with a sigh. ‘I come from the South too, remember, my loyalties are divided as well.’

  ‘Surely you don’t approve of slavery, Henry?’ she said in horror.

  He shrugged. ‘I was brought up to it, Matty. Our slaves were treated well, I had a black mammy, played with slave children. It isn’t all like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, you know, Harriet Beecher Stowe has a great deal to answer for in painting such a slanted picture. I wonder what will happen to the slaves when they are all set free – few have any experience of anything but growing cotton.’

  ‘People can learn other trades,’ Matilda said indignantly.

  ‘But you are forgetting how many there are of them.’ Henry shrugged. ‘If they all rush to the cities, who will feed them, and give them somewhere to live? Many will die of cold if they go up North, white men will be fearful that they will become cheap labour. I can see so many problems ahead. Lincoln himself doesn’t have the answers.’

  ‘So will you be involved in gun-running to the South?’ Matilda sniped.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he said quietly. ‘Not to North or South. I’ll sit on the fence and watch the two sides fight it out. Later, when it is over, I guess I’ll be one of those who tries to put the country back together again.’

  Matilda felt a little chastened, his voice was one of reason. ‘I’m sorry, Henry, I don’t know why I’m getting so worked up, it’s not my fight either.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he said, leaning forward and putting one hand on her arm. ‘There will be enough hot-heads without us joining them. I heard today that my three nephews have rushed to enlist down in Georgia. They will be in my prayers, along with James, and Peter too if he joins. Meanwhile people like you and me, Matty, have to keep the wheels turning here.’ After leaving Henry’s house, Matilda went straight down to Folsom Street, taking a box of clothes Alicia had given her.

  As she walked in through the front door she heard Dolores raging in the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t care if your breasts are sore,’ she shouted. ‘That babby needs milk or he will die. Stop whining, girl, and go and get him.’

  Over the years, many girls had come to them pregnant, and their babies were born in the house. It was always very difficult to find such girls jobs, usually they ended up answering advertisements from widowed farmers out in the territories. Yet many of these arranged marriages had worked well, as for most of the girls a home and a husband was all they wanted.

  But Matilda had known from the first time she met Polly, the girl Dolores was shouting at, that she was trouble, She could see it in her calculating blue eyes and, her insolent stance, and hear it in her whining v
oice. Yet she couldn’t turn her away.

  Fern had found her late one night crouched down in a doorway, heavily pregnant. She was just fourteen, and she’d turned to prostitution when she’d been thrown out of her job as kitchen maid because her mistress found she was pregnant. She had been living on the streets since March, she was filthy, lousy, half starved, and Dolores believed she had the pox. Her belly was huge, her legs and arms like sticks, and her eyes sunken into her head. Dolores had to cut off her hair because it was too matted to get at the lice. She looked worse than any of the children in Five Points.

  Matilda walked into the kitchen to find Polly slouched in a chair. Dolores was standing over her, so angry that the veins in her forehead were all popping out.

  Polly’s baby had been born eight days ago. Dolores delivered him and even gave up her own bed so the new mother could have peace and quiet for the laying in. Polly called him Abraham, after the President, and one of the other girls, laughing, said it was a good name, as he was as long, thin and ugly as Lincoln. He was around six pounds at birth, but he looked sickly, and clearly this was why Dolores was so angry now.

  Matilda had hoped that she was wrong about Polly, but unfortunately she’d turned out to be far worse than any other girl they’d ever had under their roof. She resented being asked to do anything, she insulted all the Negro girls, and kept boasting that back home in Indiana her father owned the biggest farm for 300 miles. She stole hair ribbons and other of the girls’ little treasures, and wouldn’t accept any of the rules of the house. Dolores said she slipped out one night and came home later with two dollars, which she must have got from a man.

  She didn’t look pitiful now, three months after her arrival. Her blonde hair was growing again, she had a rosy bloom to her skin, and her limbs had filled out. In a blue print dress she looked well cared for and pretty.