“A wonderful photographer,” said Gerald Rivers. “You might have heard of him. Theodore Keller.”
And Mary beamed. She beamed at them all. Then she glanced at her brother. If he could play this game so well, why, so could she.
“I not only know him,” she said, “it was I who persuaded Frank Master to sponsor his first important exhibition. I have several of his photographs myself.”
“You know him well?” asked Gerald, delighted.
“I know his sister better,” she answered without a blink. She smiled at Sean. “Actually,” she said, “my father used to get his cigars at their uncle’s store.” It was perfectly true, in a sense.
“And what did your father do?” said Gerald.
“My father?” She’d been so pleased with herself that she hadn’t anticipated any further questions. “My father?” She could feel herself starting to go pale. The awful horror of their lodgings’ squalor, of Five Points, of everything she must not speak of, suddenly filled her with a terrible, cold fear. Her family’s eyes were all on her. What on earth was she supposed to say?
“Ah,” said Sean, loudly. “Now there was a character.”
Their eyes were on him at once.
“My father,” said Sean, “was an investor. Mind you, like many investors, he had his good days and his bad ones, so we were never sure if we were facing riches or ruin. But,” he smiled genially, “we’re still here.”
After her near drowning, Mary was coming up for air again. She watched her brother, fascinated. He hadn’t exactly lied—their father certainly liked to call his bets investments, and he had good days and his bad days all right. The fact that somehow Sean had implied that the old man was on Wall Street, without quite saying it, she could only admire, as she would the dexterity of a pianist. As for saying “We’re still here,” it was a masterstroke. Of course they were still here, or they wouldn’t be sitting at this table. But it could mean, and surely would be taken to mean, that the family fortune had never been lost, and only improved upon. Her brother hadn’t finished, though.
“But above all, like Jerome and Belmont and so many others, my father was a sporting man. Loved the races. Loved to bet.” He glanced across the table and looked Mary straight in the eye. “He had his own racehorse, his greatest pride and joy, called Brian Boru.”
It was all she could do not to choke. She looked down at the table. That terrible old fighting dog, kept in their stinking lodgings, had been transformed, as only a true Irishman can transform things, into a racehorse, swift and sleek.
“And when he died,” Sean continued, “the remains of that horse were buried with him.”
“Really?” Lord Rivers was most appreciative; English aristocrats liked sportsmen and eccentrics. “What a splendid fellow. I’d like to have met him.”
Sean still wasn’t done yet. “Not only that, but the family priest it was who buried them both.” And he sat back in his chair and gazed benevolently at them all.
“Magnificent,” cried His Lordship and his son together. Style, eccentricity, a high-born disregard for the respectable, and a churchman who knew better than to make a nuisance of himself: this Mr. O’Donnell was clearly a natural toff, a man after their own hearts.
“Did the priest really bury them both?” Lady Rivers asked Mary.
“I was there, and it’s true, the priest buried my father with Brian Boru.”
There wasn’t a word of a lie in it.
Later, after the Rivers family had left, Mary and Sean went into the drawing room together, and sat down to review the evening.
“I need a drink,” said Mary.
He fetched it. She nursed the brandy for a while.
“What are you thinking, Mary?” he asked.
“That you are the devil himself,” she answered.
“Not true.”
“Brian Boru.”
And then she laughed, and laughed. And laughed, until she cried.
Ellis Island
1901
SALVATORE CARUSO WAS five years old when he came to Ellis Island. It was New Year’s Day, 1901. The day was icy cold but clear, and over the snowy landscape all around the wide waters of the harbor, the sky was crystal blue.
The Caruso family had been fortunate. From Naples they’d taken the Hohenzollern—the German ships were best, his father said—and they’d crossed the Atlantic in less than ten days. It had been crowded, down in steerage. The smell of the latrines almost made him throw up, and the throbbing of the engines, his mother said, was a punishment sent by God. But there had been no storms during the crossing, and they were allowed up on deck to get the fresh air for an hour every day. His mother had brought food—ham and salami, olives, dried fruit, even bread, tightly wrapped in napkins—that had lasted through the voyage. Each evening Uncle Luigi had led the singing of Neapolitan songs, like “Finiculi, Finicula,” in his soft tenor voice.
There were eight of them altogether: his parents, his mother’s brother, Uncle Luigi, and the five children. Giuseppe was the eldest, fifteen years old, strongly built like his father, a good worker. All the children looked up to Giuseppe, but being so much older, he was somewhat apart. Two other little boys had not been so strong, and died in infancy. So the next in line was Anna. She was nine. Then came Paolo, Salvatore, and little Maria, who was just three.
As the ship passed through the narrows into the waters of New York harbor, the deck was crowded. Everyone was excited. And little Salvatore would have been happy too, if he hadn’t discovered a terrible secret.
His mother was holding little Maria by the hand. Until Maria came along, Salvatore had been the baby of the family. But now he had someone to look up to him, and it was his job to protect her. He liked to play with his baby sister and to show her things.
His mother was wearing a black coat against the cold. Most of the women had their heads covered with a white shawl, but despite the winter weather, his mother had put on her best hat. It was black also, with a tattered little veil and a limp artificial flower on the brim. Salvatore had heard that once there had been two flowers, but this was before he was born. He understood that she was wearing her hat now so that the Americans should see that the family were people of some standing.
Concetta Caruso was short and dark and fiercely proud. She knew that the people of her village were superior to the people of the neighboring villages, and that the Italian south, the Mezzogiorno, was finer than all the other lands of the world, whatever they might be. She did not know what people of other nations ate, and did not care. For Italian food was best.
She knew also that, whichever of the saints she asked to help her, God saw all the sins of the world, and that He would decide whether any mercy was to be shown.
That was fate. It was inescapable, as certain as the blue dome of the sky over the Earth. Going to America wasn’t going to change that.
“Why are we going to America?” Salvatore had asked, as they sat in the cart, on their way from the family’s little farm into Naples.
“Because there is money in America, Toto,” his father had answered. “A heap of dollars to send to your grandmother and your aunts, so they can keep the farm.”
“We can’t get dollars in Naples?”
“In Naples? No.” His father had smiled. “You will like America. Your Uncle Francesco is there, and all your cousins that you have never met, and all waiting to greet you.”
“Is it true,” Salvatore had asked, “that everyone in America is happy, and you can do whatever you want?”
But before his father could reply, his mother had cut in.
“It is not for you to think of being happy, Salvatore,” she said firmly. “God will decide if you deserve to be happy. Be grateful that you are alive.”
“Yes, Concetta, of course,” his father began. He was not so religious. But Concetta was implacable.
“Only bandits do what they want, Salvatore. Camorristi. And God will punish them. Obey your parents, work hard, look after your famil
y. It is enough.”
“There are still choices,” Uncle Luigi had said gently.
“No,” Concetta had flared up, “there is no choice.” She’d gazed down at her little son. “You are a good boy, Salvatore,” she said in a softer voice, “but you must not hope for too much, or God will punish you. Always remember that.”
“Yes, Mama,” he’d said.
Next to his mother, holding little Maria’s other hand, was Uncle Luigi.
Uncle Luigi was small. He had a round head, and the strands of hair he plastered across it could not conceal the fact that he was bald. He was not powerful like Salvatore’s father, who only tolerated him. He had worked in a store; he could also read and write, and liked to go to church with his sister, neither of which impressed the other men in the family. “Reading and writing is a waste of time,” Salvatore’s father would say. “And the priests are all rogues.” Uncle Luigi was a little strange. Sometimes he would hum to himself, and gaze out into space, as though in a dream. But the children all loved him, and Concetta protected him.
Salvatore had been put between Anna and Paolo. Anna was slim and serious. Though she was only nine, she was the eldest daughter, and she helped her mother in all things. She and Paolo didn’t always get along, but Salvatore liked Anna, because she used to take him out for walks into the woods when he was little, and give him chocolate.
As for Paolo, he wasn’t even two years older than Salvatore. Paolo was his best friend; they did everything together. During the voyage, Paolo had been sick, and he kept coughing, but he seemed better now, and Uncle Luigi said the fresh air would put him right.
Salvatore loved his family. He could not imagine life without them. And now they had all crossed the ocean safely, and Ellis Island lay just ahead of them. There, he knew, they would all be inspected before being allowed into America.
And that was the terrible secret he had heard his father tell his mother, not an hour before. One of the family wasn’t going to make it.
Rose Vandyck Master stared at the picture. It was a charming watercolor of her cottage at Newport, and she had been so pleased with it that she had hung it on the wall in her boudoir, over the little French bureau where she liked to write letters. Her husband William was at work, and the children were out, so she could concentrate in peace. She had just put on her pearl choker. For some reason, she always seemed to think best when she was wearing her pearls. And she needed to think clearly, for she was facing one of the most difficult decisions of her life.
The life of Rose Master was privileged, and she knew it. She was a loyal wife and a loving mother, and she ran her houses to perfection. But she hadn’t come by all this good fortune without hard work and calculation. And having got so far, it was hardly surprising that she meant to go further. If her husband was working to increase the family fortune, then her task, as she saw it—and most women she knew would have agreed—was to raise their social position. Indeed, for a married woman of her class and time, blessed, or cursed, with ambition, there wasn’t much else one could do.
The question before her was by no means simple. There were many things to calculate, opportunities to seize, social pitfalls to avoid. And the further up the social scale one went, the more one’s freedom of choice was restricted.
Where was the family going to live?
Not in the summer, of course; that was settled long ago. They’d always be at the cottage.
Every family needed a cottage. By “cottage,” of course, one meant a summer house on the coast. It might be modest or it might be a mansion, but that’s where mothers and children spent the summer months, and one’s husband, assuming he had work to do in the city, came for weekends. And the truly fashionable had cottages in Newport, Rhode Island.
Newport had been chosen for good reason. As the British and French had discovered in centuries past, its harbor was deep, sheltered and magnificent. The New York Yacht Club, which now trounced Britain’s elite Royal Yacht Squadron in the America’s Cup every year, had its home there. Newport’s many miles of unspoiled shoreline provided space for all the cottages that society might need—indeed, more than enough, for Newport society was exclusive. Once one belonged in Newport society, one had reached the top.
Naturally, presence was required. A couple of years ago, when her husband had taken her to London for the season, she had still insisted that she be back in Newport by the second week in July. Of course, with dozens of American heiresses already married into the English aristocracy, and a regular American colony now enjoying the British capital, some fashionable folk—the “steamer set”—preferred to winter in New York and summer in London. But Rose liked to be seen in Newport. “Otherwise,” she informed her husband, “people might think we’ve fallen off the end of the Earth.”
Newport was perfect for the summer. The problem was New York.
The family was well represented in the city. William’s grandmother, old Hetty Master, was still in isolated splendor at Gramercy Park. His father Tom had recently bought the late Mr. Sean O’Donnell’s splendid house on Lower Fifth, after he died on a return voyage from England. And for the last few years, William and Rose had been renting a fine place, further up the avenue. But now the owner wanted it back, and it was time to buy a place of their own.
“You’d better decide where we go, Rose,” William had genially remarked. “Brooklyn or Queens, Manhattan or the Bronx. Staten Island if you like. So long as it’s in the city.”
Technically, of course, all the outlandish places he mentioned were part of the city now. Just before the new century began, these surrounding areas—Brooklyn and Queens County on Long Island, part of the old Dutch Bronx estate above Manhattan to the north, and rural Staten Island across the harbor to the south—had all been incorporated within the expanded City of New York. Brooklyn, proudly independent, had only just been persuaded to join. But the resulting Five Boroughs of New York made the metropolis, after London, the most populous city in the world.
And there were splendid houses, and pleasant parks, and delightful open country in any one of those five boroughs. But Rose Master wasn’t free to choose them. The family could only live in Manhattan, and not in many places there.
Lower Manhattan was out. The area of the old city was all commercial now. Even the pleasant areas around Greenwich Village or Chelsea, a little to the north and west, had been overrun with immigrants, and turned into tenements mostly. Respectable New York had moved gradually north, and kept on moving. The fine old Broadway stores, like Tiffany’s the jewelers, had moved uptown with their customers. Lord & Taylor, and Brooks Brothers, both fashionable now, were already in the Twenties.
Then there was the question of noise. After the terrible blizzard of 1888 had brought the city to a standstill, everyone had agreed that the telegraph wires should be buried underground. This was easy to do, and it had improved the look of the place. Many people also argued for underground transport, which would be out of sight, and impervious to weather. But this was taking much longer. So for the time being, the El trains, with their noise and smoke, and tracks running past everyone’s windows, were still puffing and clattering up the avenues on the East Side of the island, and up parts of the West Side too.
As fashionable New York advanced northward, therefore, it avoided the smoke and noise, and hugged the quieter center. Fifth and Madison avenues, and the streets close to them, were the best residential quarters.
“What about Park Avenue?” William had suggested.
“Park?” she had cried, before she’d realized he was teasing her. “Nobody lives on Park.”
The trouble with Park Avenue went back thirty years, to when old Commodore Vanderbilt had erected a big railroad shed on Fourth Avenue at Forty-second Street, to act as a kind of terminal. Fourth had changed its name to Park Avenue these days, which sounded well enough. But the terminal was a mess, and the railroad yards spread in a hideous swathe for a dozen blocks to the north of it. Even above Fifty-sixth Street, where the track
s narrowed and were covered over, the noise and smoke rising from the center of the avenue indicated that the infernal regions were only just below.
“What about the West Side then?” he’d said. “It’s better value there.”
She knew he was gently teasing her. Not that the West Side was to be despised; gone already were the days when the Dakota was in the wilderness. The West Side was quieter and land prices were lower; the big family houses in the side streets were often larger than their equivalents on the East Side, and some real mansions were arising there too.
But who lived there? That was the point. What was the tone of the place? Would a West Side address sound as perfect as the cottage in Newport?
No, it had to be somewhere close to Fifth and Madison. The question was, how far up?
Almost twenty years had passed since the Vanderbilts built their mighty mansions on Fifth, in the Fifties. Since then, people had been building further north. Palaces in all kinds of styles, designed by architects like Carrère & Hastings, Richard Morris Hunt, and Kimball & Thompson, had arisen in the Sixties and Seventies, on Madison and Fifth. French chateaux, Renaissance palaces, the greatest styles from the architectural menu of Old Europe were being splendidly plundered and copied so that their owners could gaze over Central Park like the merchant princes they were.
The Masters couldn’t afford a palace like that. They could live near one, though. But should they?
J. P. Morgan didn’t live up there. Pierpont Morgan’s mansion was on the east side of Madison, down at Thirty-sixth Street. Mr. Morgan had openly stated his opinion that some of the mansions going up on Fifth were vulgar monstrosities. And one couldn’t deny that he had a point. Most of those mansions were being built by new money. Very new money indeed. Morgan’s great fortune might only derive from his father Junius, but it had come from banking in London, in the grandest manner. The Morgans, besides, had been well-to-do in Connecticut since the seventeenth century. Compared to all but the oldest Dutch families, they were old money.
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