Rosina Lippi's Blog, page 28

Ethan, Callie Questions and (maybe) Answers

*Edited to correct inaccuracies.

I get quite a lot of email about the Wilderness series, and I'm always thrilled to hear from readers. Really, thrilled. Writing is a very solitary occupation and every once in a while I start to wonder if I've hallucinated everything. Your emails remind me that somebody is out there, listening. So thank you.

Over the last year or so, I have been getting the same question over and over again (yesterday, twice, as a matter of fact):

What's up with Ethan and Callie? What exactly happened?

It goes against the grain to answer questions like this. Generally it's up to you, as reader, to interpret the story as you see fit. You might decide that Ethan has been replaced by an alien and is working undercover to arrange the destruction of mankind. I doubt you could convince me, but I couldn't tell you you're wrong. If that's where the story went for you, then that's the end of that.  You may have a theory I find hard to fathom, but that is your right.

So let's look at Ethan and Callie.

Things you know for sure:

Ethan lived in Manhattan for two years because his uncle Todd's will demanded it of him. He didn't return to Paradise in  that time.
He's a friendly guy, and so he will have made friends. He sees Martha Kirby quite regularly, and tutors her. He's very attached to the Spencer family, which is where Martha lives as the Spencers are her guardians.
He leaves New York to return to Paradise quite suddenly.
Once back in Paradise there's no talk of friends in Manhattan, no overt sign of letter writing, no visitors.  He is, essentially, without immediate family though he always included in the Bonner family affairs as Elizabeth's nephew.
He dedicates himself, all his energy and resources, into putting the village back on its feet after years of decline. His small circle of friends includes Callie ad Daniel, Blue-Jay and Runs-from-Bears and Nathaniel.
In all the time you've known him, he has never shown interest in the opposite sex.
Martha is back in Paradise too, and eventually Jemima shows up ready to make trouble, as usual.
Jemima lets it be known that she did some investigating in Manhattan and knows all about Martha's sad little engagement. In fact, she visited Martha's fiance's mother and put an end to the whole ridiculous undertaking. Why she did this isn't immediately apparent.
About the same time Jemima lets it be known that she investigated Martha while in New York, she  says she did the same for  Ethan.  She voices this in a threatening way.
Ethan lives on his own and is lonely. he sees Callie as someone he likes and admires, and someone who needs his help. Marriages have been founded on far worse foundations, and if he can get her to agree, they will both be better off.
Because his experience is wider and he is lonely, he recognizes that same problem in her.
Callie has never shown interest in the opposite sex, either.
When Martha marries suddenly, Callie feels hugely betrayed and rejected.
Ethan may recognize this reaction as founded in something other than sisterly affection.
Ethan capitalizes on the opportunity: he couches his proposal in terms that Callie can live with, and offers her things that she needs and wants. Friendship not least among them.
They marry and make a stable, peaceful, kind home where they raise Jennet and Luke's children.  And they never sleep in the same bed.

So read through this list and then ask yourself the question: what was the basis of Ethan and Callie's relationship?

 

Ethan, Callie Questions and (maybe) Answers

*Edited to correct inaccuracies.

I get quite a lot of email about the Wilderness series, and I'm always thrilled to hear from readers. Really, thrilled. Writing is a very solitary occupation and every once in a while I start to wonder if I've hallucinated everything. Your emails remind me that somebody is out there, listening. So thank you.

Over the last year or so, I have been getting the same question over and over again (yesterday, twice, as a matter of fact):

What's up with Ethan and Callie? What exactly happened?

It goes against the grain to answer questions like this. Generally it's up to you, as reader, to interpret the story as you see fit. You might decide that Ethan has been replaced by an alien and is working undercover to arrange the destruction of mankind. I doubt you could convince me, but I couldn't tell you you're wrong. If that's where the story went for you, then that's the end of that.  You may have a theory I find hard to fathom, but that is your right.

So let's look at Ethan and Callie.

Things you know for sure:

Ethan lived in Manhattan for two years because his uncle Todd's will demanded it of him. He didn't return to Paradise in  that time.
He's a friendly guy, and so he will have made friends. He sees Martha Kirby quite regularly, and tutors her. He's very attached to the Spencer family, which is where Martha lives as the Spencers are her guardians.
He leaves New York to return to Paradise quite suddenly.
Once back in Paradise there's no talk of friends in Manhattan, no overt sign of letter writing, no visitors.  He is, essentially, without immediate family though he always included in the Bonner family affairs as Elizabeth's nephew.
He dedicates himself, all his energy and resources, into putting the village back on its feet after years of decline. His small circle of friends includes Callie ad Daniel, Blue-Jay and Runs-from-Bears and Nathaniel.
In all the time you've known him, he has never shown interest in the opposite sex.
Martha is back in Paradise too, and eventually Jemima shows up ready to make trouble, as usual.
Jemima lets it be known that she did some investigating in Manhattan and knows all about Martha's sad little engagement. In fact, she visited Martha's fiance's mother and put an end to the whole ridiculous undertaking. Why she did this isn't immediately apparent.
About the same time Jemima lets it be known that she investigated Martha while in New York, she  says she did the same for  Ethan.  She voices this in a threatening way.
Ethan lives on his own and is lonely. he sees Callie as someone he likes and admires, and someone who needs his help. Marriages have been founded on far worse foundations, and if he can get her to agree, they will both be better off.
Because his experience is wider and he is lonely, he recognizes that same problem in her.
Callie has never shown interest in the opposite sex, either.
When Martha marries suddenly, Callie feels hugely betrayed and rejected.
Ethan may recognize this reaction as founded in something other than sisterly affection.
Ethan capitalizes on the opportunity: he couches his proposal in terms that Callie can live with, and offers her things that she needs and wants. Friendship not least among them.
They marry and make a stable, peaceful, kind home where they raise Jennet and Luke's children.  And they never sleep in the same bed.

So read through this list and then ask yourself the question: what was the basis of Ethan and Callie's relationship?

 

Summary: Dialect in Dialogue

I came across this material while I was sorting through posts, and I thought it might be useful to those of you who are writing fiction.

Click to watch Polar Bear on Vimeo: storytelling in the classroom

Fact: everybody has some kind of regional and social dialect.

Question: What features indicate differences in national or regional originl; social standing;  economics, for the spoken language?

Syntax (word order and grammatical constructions)

Examples:

He said he may can have these by the first of the month.  (U.S. South)

Coffee I can always drink, so pour me.  (Yiddish influenced)

Down the shore everything's all right.    (New Jersey)

If you're going out, I'm coming with.     (Midwest)

Are you off then? /  I might do. /  That's just not on, luv.   (Britain)

"Mama, you know you can't drink cause next thing you know you be laughin loud and carryin on." (Bambara) (African American English)

"You want me to quit graduate school and learn how to cast drill bits?" –"I want you should be there when I die," her father said. "Without me having to send you bus fare first." (Lippi) (working class Chicago)

Lexicon (word choice)

"Bless me, what a row that was." (Kinsale)

"Ar," said Billy Pretty. "Remember the omaloor that brought me some decorated turr's eggs?" (Proulx)

Idiom (turns of phrase)

"Take a damper, you lobcock." (Kinsale)

"That beats my time all holler!" (Eggleston)

Phonology (pronunciation) by far the hardest to write effectively.  In the examples below, Bambara is writing her own variety of English, and that comes through.

"I'm axin you all a simple question. You keep talkin bout what's proper for a woman my age. How old am I anyhow?" (Bambara)

Pa' was a' the Chrissmas pah'y wiv Pee'a n twas er wha' giv im a co'on swea'shir'. (Pat was at the Christmas party with Peter, and it was her what give him a cotton sweatshirt.)

NOTE the dangers of trying to use dialect to draw character:

Confusing the reader; slowing the reader down.
Evoking social evaluations you don't want.
If you condescend to a character or try to indicate a character's stupidity by misrepresenting their language, the reader will mistrust you — and rightly so.

Examples of what not to do.

"Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! Licked him all to smash!" said Bud, rubbing his hands on his knees. "That beats my time all holler!"

And Betsy Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell out, though she was on the defeated side.

"He's powerful smart, is the master," said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones. "He'll beat the whole kit and tuck of 'em afore he's through. I know'd he was smart. That's the reason I tuck him," proceeded Mr. Means.

"Yaas, but he don't lick enough. Not nigh," answered Pete Jones. "No lickin', no larnin', says I."

The Hoosier School-Master. Edward Eggleston

"Come out," she said.

"Ay! They have me fast. But when they do let me out, nina, I will take thee in my arms; and whosoever tries to tear thee away again will have a dagger in his heart. Dios de mi vida!" … "But thou lovest me, Carlos?"

 The Doomswoman. Gertude Atherton

"Me, I am dead to shame," grinned Rene. "Who would be respectable? All of my days I was respectable until ze war set me free lak ze darkies. Nevaire again must I be deegneefied and full of ennui. Free lak ze bird! I lak my pie wagon. I lak my mule. I lak ze dear Yankees who so kindly buy ze pie of Madame Belle Mere. No, my Scarlett, I must be ze King of ze Pies. Eet ees my destiny! Lak Napoleon, I follow my star." He flourished his whip dramatically.

Gone with the Wind. Margaret Mitchell

"Look, Ash," said Will slowly. "I ain't aimin' to have nobody say nothin' against Suellen, no matter what they think. You leave it to me. When you've finished with the readin' and the prayin' and you say: 'If anyone would like to say a few words,' you look right at me, so I can speak first."

Gone with the Wind. Margaret Mitchell

Examples of well done dialect representation

"Bless me, what a row that was, Miss Timms! Shev was right bosky, do you see—he was used up. Corned, pickled and salted—"

"Comatose, Miss Timms," Durham explained gravely. "In strong drink."

"Oh, yes, good Oxford word. Comatose!" The colonel seemed to find that description an uplifting one. "Perfectly senseless. And we was having to carry him home, y'see, between the two of us, and he weighs—'S blood, he must weigh fourteen stone! And who might drive by at the very moment but the one they call the resurrection jarvey—"

"Night coachman. Sells bodies to the surgeons," Durham interpreted. "For anatomy lectures."

"Right! So what should I think—and it was my idea entirely, I promise you, Miss—and the fellow took him, and—" Colonel Fane made an expressive revolution with his forefinger. "And, y'know—his clothes, we got those, and the fellow took him in a sheet to old Brooks! In Blenheim Street! Took him there, to the lecturer's door!" He leaned back his head and thumped the table. "And offered—and offered . . .  him for  . . . f'or sale!"

Flowers from the Storm, Laura Kinsale

 

"Ah," said Yark. "I 'as a one or two to finish up, y'know," pointing to wooden skeletons and half-planked sides. "Says I might 'elp Nige Fearn wid 'is long-liner this winter. But if I gets out in the woods, you know, and finds the timber, it'll go along. Something by spring, see, by the time the ice goes. If  I goes in the woods and finds the right sticks you know, spruce, var. See, you must find good uns, your stem, you wants to bring it down with a bit of a 'ollow to it, sternpost and your knee, and deadwoods a course, and breast'ook. You has to get the right ones. Your timbers, you know. There's some around 'ere steams 'em. I wouldn't set down in a steam timber boat. Weak."

The Shipping News, Annie Proulx

"Generation gap," spits Elo, like I suggested castor oil and fricassee possum in the milk shakes or somethin. "That's a white concept for a white phenomenon. There's no generation gap among Black people. We are a col—"

"Yeh, well never mind," says Joe Lee. "The point is Mama well, it's pride. You embarrass yourself and us too dancin like that."

"I wasn't shame." Then nobody say nuthin. Them standin there in they pretty clothes with drinks in they hands and gangin up on me, and me in the third-degree chair and nary a olive to my name. Felt just like the police got hold to me.

"First of all," Task say, holdin up his hand and tickin off the offenses, "the dress. Now that dress is too short, Mama, and too low-cut for a woman your age. And Tamu's going to make a speech tonight to kick off the campaign and will be introducin you and expecting you to organize the council of elders—"

"Me? Didn nobody ask me nuthin. You mean Nisi? She change her name?"

"Well, Norton was supposed to tell you about it. Nisi wants to introduce you and then encourage the older folks to form a Council of the Elders to act as an advisory—"

"And you going to be standing there with your boobs out and that wig on your head and that hem up to your ass. And people'll say, 'Ain't that the homy bitch that was grindin with the blind dude?"

"Elo, be cool a minute," say Task, gettin to the next finger. "And then there's the drinkin. Mama, you know you can't drink cause next thing you know you be laughin loud and carryin on," and he grab another finger for the loudness. "And then there's the dancin. You been tattooed on the man for four records straight and slow draggin even on the fast numbers. How you think that look for a woman your age?"

"What's my age?"

"What?"

"I'm axin you all a simple question. You keep talkin bout what's proper for a woman my age. How old am I anyhow?" And Joe Lee slams his eyes shut and squinches up his face to figure. And Task run a hand over his ear and stare into his glass like the ice cubes goin calculate for him. And Elo just starin at the top of my head like she goin rip the wig off any minute now.

"Is your hair braided up under that thing? If so, why don't you take it off? You always did do a neat cornroll."

"Uh huh," cause I'm thinkin how she couldn't undo her hair fast enough talking bout cornroll so countrified. None of which was the subject. "How old, I say?"

"Sixtee-one or—"

"You a damn lie Joe Lee Peoples."

"And that's another thing," say Task on the fingers.

"You know what you all can kiss," I say, gettin up and brushin the wrinkles out my lap.

"Oh, Mama," Elo say, puttin a hand on my shoulder like she hasn't done since she left home and the hand landin light and not sure it supposed to be there. Which hurt me to my heart. Cause this was the child in our happiness fore Mr. Peoples die. And I carried that child strapped to my chest till she was nearly two. We was close is what I'm tryin to tell you.

"My Man Bovanne" Tone Cade Bambara

Doing the Research

Two varieties of English that are notoriously difficult to capture well are African American English and Scots English. Below are selected documented features of both languages as a starting point. Note that there is variation within each of these languages, following from geographical and social markers.  Wikipedia is, oddly enough, a very good place to find solid examples of syntax, morphology and idiom for a wide range of socially and geographically marked varieties of English.

African American


Scots





*Negative concord (one thing negative, all things negative):

Ain't no cat cain't get in no henhouse. (Labov)

I cain’t kill nothin and won’t nothin die. (Smitherman)

v
*Generalized "ain't" -

Ain't no playground in heaven for nobody.

-I on  know, man. How you figure they ain't no playground in heaven for little kids?

-It ain't. God ain't making it special for nobody. 

*Plural formation:

Two old building.

*Third person singular -s optional deletion:

Marcy want a new bike.

She sing real loud.

*Copula deletion:

People gon look at you like you dumb.

The coffee cold.  The coffee is cold.

*Durative "be":

She be working at the factory. She's always at work at the factory.

The coffee bees cold.   The coffee is always cold.

*Perfective Tenses

She BIN had that dress.  She's had that dress for a long time, and still does.

Befo  you know it, he be done finished the job.  Before you know it, he will have already finished the job.

*Clause reduction in questions/plural s reduction

I ast Ruf could she bring it to Tom place.  I asked Ruth if she could bring it to Tom's place.

*Negative concord (one thing negative, all things negative)

A dinna care aboot nane o't.  I don't care for any of it.

A'm no for nae mair.  I don't want any.

*Negation in the past tense with 'never'

A niver gotten stertit till nine.  I didn't get started until nine.

*Negative or unpleasant attributes indicated by the prefix mis.

That wickit man mislippens his bairns.  That wicked man neglects his children.

*Gaelic influence on verb formation

She'ss at sayin.   She says.

She wull pe at sayin.   She will say.

*Distinctive use of the definite article

A shillin the piece. One shilling each.

Ma sin's lairnin the carpenterin. My son's learning carpentry.

*Distinctions in use of plural /possessive -s

He said he seen a cou's heid at the door.   He said he saw the head of a living cow looking in.

She said she seen a cou-heid at the door.  She said she saw the severed head of a dead cow at the door.

*Reflexive pronouns in emphatic forms

He wis twa year yunger nor masel.  He was two years younger than me.

Masel an Dauvit gaed hame.  David and I went home.

A telt ye we micht can mend it wirsel.   I told you we may be able to repair it ourselves.

Gang awa yer twa sels. Go away both of you.

*Relative Markers

The laddies wha's baa's tint. The boys whose ball is lost.

 

Counting Kids: Nathaniel's Offspring

I get questions quite regularly from people who are unclear on how many children Nathaniel fathered.  There is some room for confusion, because some of the children were born in the ten year pause between the second and third novels, and some of them died in that period, as well.

And it is recorded incorrectly in a couple places. Here's the definitive answer in the form of a family tree. Before you click on it for a larger, more legible version, be warned that if you have not yet read the novels but intend to, you will find this chart chock full of spoilers. It also provides a little bit of context for The Gilded Hour, but nothing spoilerish at all. This chart includes all children born, even those who died at birth or shortly after.

Really I should post this in the FAQ section, but the software is misbehaving and I haven't had the time to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it.

rosina lippi | sara donati

Tied to the Tracks

My name is Rosina Lippi. I'm a published novelist, independent academic (sociocultural linguistics, primarily), an editor and a researcher.  My academic work appears under my full name, novels and short fiction under Rosina Lippi, and historical novels under Sara Donati. I am best known (outside academia) for the Wilderness series of six novels, available in traditional and e-formats as well as unabridged audio, in multiple languages.  My first novel (Homestead) won the PEN/Hemingway award and was shortlisted for England's prestigious Orange Prize.

I get a lot of email asking me if I'm working on a novel, and if so, what it's about. Here's information about the novel I'm currently writing.
I'm also working on an academic paper with the working title Up the Down Staircase: Metaphor in the Ideological Rationalization of School Failure.

The Editor's Catch-All: AWK

First, a general announcement:

I've restored about a thousand posts from the earlier incarnation of this weblog. It will take me a while to categorize all of them, but the tag cloud should help (low in the right hand column) and there are a few links, also to the right, that are more specific. For example: links to the 'writing sex scenes' series and the 'memoir' series. Warning: the older the post, the more likely the external links will no longer work.

So now, this word: awkward. You may see it  in the margin of work you have handed off to people in your workshop, or to your editor. The simplest interpretation of the AWK in the margin goes like this:

This [sentence]  doesn't work.

Or:

This doesn't work on many levels.

Or:

This doesn't work on so many levels, I don't know where to start.

An experienced writer, one who knows how to make the most of constructive criticism, will then look at the sentence in question and try  — really try — to see what's wrong. Point of view? Tone? Lexical choices? Plot turn?  And if so, why didn't the editor write POV instead of AWK? Answer: see responses two and three, above.

There are many synonyms for the word awkward: amateurish, stiff, artless, bumbling, floundering, inept, ungainly, ungraceful, unpolished but a good editor will most likely stick with AWK, because this shifts the responsibility back to you, the writer. There's something off here, your editor is saying. You need to figure out what it is and fix it.

I've got a radical suggestion for you. If and when you encounter the AWK, do not panic. If you're talking about a single sentence or short paragraph, don't even try to rewrite it. Delete it, and see if the center holds. Because it often will.

 

The Editor’s Catch-All: AWK

First, a general announcement:

I’ve restored about a thousand posts from the earlier incarnation of this weblog. It will take me a while to categorize all of them, but the tag cloud should help (low in the right hand column) and there are a few links, also to the right, that are more specific. For example: links to the ‘writing sex scenes’ series and the ‘memoir’ series. Warning: the older the post, the more likely the external links will no longer work.

So now, this word: awkward. You may see it  in the margin of work you have handed off to people in your workshop, or to your editor. The simplest interpretation of the AWK in the margin goes like this:

This [sentence]  doesn’t work.

Or:

This doesn’t work on many levels.

Or:

This doesn’t work on so many levels, I don’t know where to start.

An experienced writer, one who knows how to make the most of constructive criticism, will then look at the sentence in question and try  — really try — to see what’s wrong. Point of view? Tone? Lexical choices? Plot turn?  And if so, why didn’t the editor write POV instead of AWK? Answer: see responses two and three, above.

There are many synonyms for the word awkward: amateurish, stiff, artless, bumbling, floundering, inept, ungainly, ungraceful, unpolished but a good editor will most likely stick with AWK, because this shifts the responsibility back to you, the writer. There’s something off here, your editor is saying. You need to figure out what it is and fix it.

I’ve got a radical suggestion for you. If and when you encounter the AWK, do not panic. If you’re talking about a single sentence or short paragraph, don’t even try to rewrite it. Delete it, and see if the center holds. Because it often will.

 

The Gilded Hour: Excerpt

The setting is Manhattan on Monday evening, March 26, 1883 as guests arrive at the new home of Alva and William Vanderbilt, a manion on Fifth Avenue just across from St. Patrick’s cathedral (at the outer edge of the city in 1883). The Vanderbilts are giving a costume ball  as a house-warming, so elaborate that the city’s richest citizens jockeyed for invitations.  A crowd of people of all classes and backgrounds have turned out to watch guests arrive. A large police force, uniformed and plainclothed, is on hand for crowd control and to keep an eye on thieves and troublemakers.  Jack Mezzanotte and Oscar Maroney are  detective sergeants on duty.  Jack is single, the son of Italian immigrants. He lives with two unmarried sisters.  Earlier on the same day he met Anna Savard, a physician, in a very different setting.  

Excerpt (draft) from The Gilded Hour.

Sara Donati

All Rights Reserved.

Do not reproduce in any way without written consent of the author.

March 26, 1883

Manhattan

On any other March night at eleven o’clock the north end of Fifth Avenue might be mistaken for a row of mausoleums scaled for giants. The great bulk of the new cathedral on one side of the street with all the usual schools and rectories and orphan asylums gathered around it, like chicks to a sleeping hen. On the other side, one mansion after the other, ornate, looming, as sterile as they were imposing. A wide street without a single tree or even the suggestion of a garden, just high walls and hundreds and hundreds of windows sealed shut, the eyes of the dead.

But tonight the newest mansion — maybe the fourth or fifth the Vanderbilts had put up over the last ten years, Jack couldn’t remember exactly — was awake. It seemed to glow, marble and sandstone reflecting the electric light that poured from every window. With its turrets and balconies and galleries it shone like an unwieldy and ill begotten star set down among its dull red and brown-brick neighbors.

A double canopy had been constructed over the Fifth Avenue entrance to protect the party goers from both weather and the crowd of curious passersby. Footmen in pale blue livery and powdered wigs stood ready to help the guests from their carriages onto the deep red rug that ran from the huge double doors, down the steps and all the way to the curb.

Tomorrow the personality of the house would retreat like a turtle into its shell; the stained glass would go dark, blinds and draperies closing off all light and fresh air.

His sisters sometimes tried to calculate how many thousands of yards of velvet and brocade and satin had gone into the draperies of even one of the Vanderbilt mansions, but the numbers quickly grew so large and absurd that they simply gave up and they turned back to their own needlework. Their endless, precious, beautiful needlework.

Every evening they waited for him, sitting knee to knee facing each other over an embroidery frame. They would jump up to take his coat and offer him food and more food and again food until he accepted the plate they had ready for him. They wanted him to have the best chair by the fire, the day’s newspapers, to hear their family gossip, worries about the weather, observations on the comings and goings of the neighbors, dire predictions about the prospects of the butcher’s new clerk, admonitions about the dampness of his coat or shoes. His sisters ran his household and aspired to run him with the same painstaking and exhausting perfectionism.

From the corner of his eye Jack saw a familiar figure, a woman of at least sixty, carefully groomed and dressed to convey nothing more threatening than genteel poverty. Fewe would guess that a multitude of hidden pockets had been sewn into her wide skirts, ready to be filled with the fruits of the night’s labor. Jack had arrested her three or four times at least over the last year. Meggie, she called herself, but her true name was unknown, maybe even to her. He was about to step off the curbside to intercept her when a hand landed heavily on the woman’s artfully slumped shoulder. Michael Hone out of the twenty-third precinct, just two years on the force but he had the eye. She gave a heavy sigh and let herself be marched off.

“Meggie must be feeling her age,” Oscar said, coming up beside Jack. “Twenty years ago she was slippery as waterweed. She’d be half way to Brooklyn before you realized she was gone. O-ho, look now. Tell me, would that particular fat assed Roman Emperor there be an elected official who shall remain shameless?”

For a time they amused each other trying to put names to costumes: Cardinal Richelieu and the Count of Monte Cristo, a Capuchin Friar, Chinese merchants with eyes outlined in kohl, wizards, cowboys, Queen Elizabeth, the Goddess Diana with bow and arrow, a trio of young women with staffs and life-like lambs fixed somehow to their wide skirts.

“Money is wasted on some people,” sniffed a young woman whose clothes were thread bare but carefully mended. “I’d come up with a better costume than Bo Peep, you can be sure of that.”

A young man dressed as a Knight of Malta followed the trio out of the carriage. Covered head to foot in hauberk and chain mail and armor, he clanked his way up the walk, listing to one side and then the other like a ship in a storm.

“Look now,” a man’s voice called out loud enough to carry over the noise. “Won’t somebody get that poor mope an anchor?”

The appreciative roar of the crowd did not slow the Crusader in pursuit of his Bo Peeps, but every policeman within ear shot tensed. The draft riots were twenty years ago but it would be another twenty before they rested easy in the presence of any crowd; moods could shift from high spirits to violence without warning. Now shopkeepers and factory workers, clerks and charwomen, men with work bags and lunch buckets, they all cooed at the sight of a cape embroidered with pearls and rubies, but people just like this had burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum and hung innocent men from light posts to vent their rage.

There was only one reliable barometer of a group ready to go sour. Jack turned his attention to a half dozen children slinking through the crowd as easily and unobserved as cats. Six in this group, the youngest maybe seven, and if he had to guess he would identify them as part of the pack that slept in an alley alongside a German baker’s place of business on Franklin Street. The brick wall there was warmed by the ovens, which made the alley a coveted spot in the winter. It was one they had to fight to keep, and could lose at any time. If there was real trouble in the air the street urchins would disappear so quickly that they might have been an illusion.

“They’re settling down,” Maroney said. The crowd’s attention had turned to a modern day Shakespeare whose hat kept sliding down over his eyes, so that he tripped repeatedly over his shoes. The urchins laughed, wide mouthed, children still and in want of amusement.

Earlier today Jack had watched more fortunate orphans being taken into the austere custody of Sister Ignatia. In shock, overwhelmed, many of them had hung back, torn between the promise of food and the numbing familiarity of the filthy tenements where their parents had died. The woman doctor — Dr. Savard — had done a lot to calm them, her manner so matter-of-fact, without any trace of condescension or pity. Chances were a few of them would still try to slip away from the orphanage, but none of the children he had seen today would survive long on the city streets.

The Children’s Aid Society estimated that there were as many as thirty thousand orphaned or abandoned children in Manhattan, while the orphan asylums could take no more than twelve thousand at a time. The urchins who lived on the streets were underdressed, mostly shoeless, lice and worm-ridden, they ate only what they could steal or scrounge or beg, and had nothing so grand as a tenement to call home. Most of them refused to ask for shelter at any of the charities that were there to put them up, for the simple fear they would never be allowed to leave again, or would find themselves on a train headed west and a future even more uncertain than the bleak one before them. And so they slept huddled together in doorways or perched on fire escapes, and many of them died over the long winter, defeated by hunger and the violence borne of despair and bone-deep anger.

One by one the carriages pulled up and came to a stop, and footmen and coachmen lined up to open doors and assist ladies who could not see their feet over skirts and petticoats. Then they followed the walkway lined with potted trees and statues through the marquee and into the house where they would eat too much and drink even more.

The early high spirits had cooled a little. The crowd began to mill around, bored and eager for distraction.

Farther down the block the doors of a carriage opened suddenly. Two young men jumped down and then turned to help the ladies, all of them preferring to walk than to wait in a stuffy carriage. In response other carriage doors began to open, at first only one or two and then in a rush. Ladies in silver and buttercup yellow and blazing reds and deep purples let themselves be directed by their husbands and fathers and brothers, lifting skirts high to avoid puddles and manure and trash, giggling nervously and turning their faces away from the crowd, as if that would be enough to spare them the very attention their elaborate costumes were designed to engage.

As soon as the last party guests had disappeared into the house, the detectives could be away home. The uniforms and roundsmen would be here the rest of the night.

“Aren’t your nieces waiting for you in the kitchen, Maroney?” Jack nudged his partner just as the captain came around the corner, stopped dead, and pointed at them.

“And you were so close,” said Jack under his breath.

“I need youse inside.” Burns jerked his thumb over his shoulder as if there might be doubt about where. “Beaney’s in courtyard off the kitchen, he’ll point you in the right direction. There’s a rumor going around that some of Greenway’s boys have snuck in.”

“Dressed as priests, no doubt,” Oscar muttered. “Pranksters that they are.”

Burns gave a surprised and reluctant bark of laughter and then intensified his scowl to offset that small lapse.

“You’ll stay at your posts,” he said, “until I send word.” And he stomped off, cursing under his breath.

Jack said, “Greenway’s boys? That’s inventive, even for you, Maroney. Did you pass Burns another anonymous note?”

Oscar drew himself up and hooked thumbs in his suspenders, throwing out his chest. Easing into an imitation of Burns that would have got him booted off the force, he lowered his voice and took on a deep brogue.

“Touchin on and appertainin to dat matter, I’ve no idea as to what you may be inferin.”

Jack grinned. “To the kitchens, then?”

“And no sparin the horses.”

They crossed the street, passing a carriage that was well past its best days and in need of paint. Inside two very old ladies in powdered wigs sat waiting, their painted faces so somber that they might have been on their way to a funeral.

A couple had just stepped out of a far more elegant and fashionable carriage. The gentleman was older, his form narrow and posture brittle, and he leaned on a cane. His costume was simplicity itself: over one shoulder he had tossed a black cape with red silk lining. The red set off the tight black breeches and a short jacket, tailored to his form exactly.

“I think he’s supposed to be one of those Spanish grandees,” Oscar said. And as the man turned his face to the light he let out a soft grunt. “That’s Cap van Gilder,” he said. “Poor sod.”

Van Gilder’s eyes were a vivid bright blue and his complexion flushed. People sometimes called such extreme high color the red flag of the white death. Consumption was said to be gentle, a romantic death, but Jack could see nothing benign in the way it dragged the youngest and strongest and most promising out of the world.

“A damn good lawyer, and strange enough for one of his ilk, fair-minded. His mother was a Belmont.”

Oscar had an encyclopedic knowledge of the old knickerbocker families for a reason Jack had never been able to figure out. Now wasn’t the time to pursue that question, though, because van Gilder had stepped back to reveal the lady who stood beside him, one hand on his raised arm while with the other she tried to keep a shawl where it belonged. She let out a little cry of surprise and irritation as it slipped out of her grasp and fluttered away.

Above layers of silk gauze that moved with the breeze her shoulders and long neck were suddenly bared to the night air. In the light of the carriage lanterns her complexion took on the shifting iridescence of abalone: golds and pinks, ivories and smoky blues. The heavy dark hair twisted into a coronet and wrapped around her head set off the elegant curve of her throat. All these thoughts went through Jack’s head in the few seconds it took the footman to catch up her shawl and drop it over her shoulders. Half turned toward the footman to smile her thanks, he saw her face for the first time.

Oscar caught his jolt of surprise. “What? You acquainted?”

“No,” Jack said. “Don’t know van Guilder. It’s the woman I recognize.”

“Huh.” Oscar could fit more doubt into a single syllable than any man alive. “Where did you make the acquaintance of somebody like that?”

“On the Hoboken Ferry,” Jack said. “Surrounded by nuns and orphans.”

Oscar’s brow shot up high. “The lady doctor you told me about? What was her name–”

“Savard. Dr. Anna Savard.”

There was a small silence between them.

Maroney said, “A mystery, then. What good luck, they’ve got two detectives at the doorstep, just waiting to sort it all out.”

end excerpt

The Gilded Hour: excerpt

Excerpt (draft) from The Gilded Hour.

Sara Donati

All Rights Reserved.

Do not reproduce in any way without written consent of the author.

March 26, 1883

Manhattan

On any other March night at eleven o’clock the north end of Fifth Avenue might be mistaken for a row of mausoleums scaled for giants. The great bulk of the new cathedral on one side of the street with all the usual schools and rectories and orphan asylums gathered around it, like chicks to a sleeping hen. On the other side, one mansion after the other, ornate, looming, as sterile as they were imposing. A wide street without a single tree or even the suggestion of a garden, just high walls and hundreds and hundreds of windows sealed shut, the eyes of the dead.

But tonight the newest mansion — maybe the fourth or fifth the Vanderbilts had put up over the last ten years, Jack couldn’t remember exactly — was awake. It seemed to glow, marble and sandstone reflecting the electric light that poured from every window. With its turrets and balconies and galleries it shone like an unwieldy and ill begotten star set down among its dull red and brown-brick neighbors.

A double canopy had been constructed over the Fifth Avenue entrance to protect the party goers from both weather and the crowd of curious passersby. Footmen in pale blue livery and powdered wigs stood ready to help the guests from their carriages onto the deep red rug that ran from the huge double doors, down the steps and all the way to the curb.

Tomorrow the personality of the house would retreat like a turtle into its shell; the stained glass would go dark, blinds and draperies closing off all light and fresh air.

His sisters sometimes tried to calculate how many thousands of yards of velvet and brocade and satin had gone into the draperies of even one of the Vanderbilt mansions, but the numbers quickly grew so large and absurd that they simply gave up and they turned back to their own needlework. Their endless, precious, beautiful needlework.

Every evening they waited for him, sitting knee to knee facing each other over an embroidery frame. They would jump up to take his coat and offer him food and more food and again food until he accepted the plate they had ready for him. They wanted him to have the best chair by the fire, the day’s newspapers, to hear their family gossip, worries about the weather, observations on the comings and goings of the neighbors, dire predictions about the prospects of the butcher’s new clerk, admonitions about the dampness of his coat or shoes. His sisters ran his household and aspired to run him with the same painstaking and exhausting perfectionism.

From the corner of his eye Jack saw a familiar figure, a woman of at least sixty, carefully groomed and dressed to convey nothing more threatening than genteel poverty. Fewe would guess that a multitude of hidden pockets had been sewn into her wide skirts, ready to be filled with the fruits of the night’s labor. Jack had arrested her three or four times at least over the last year. Meggie, she called herself, but her true name was unknown, maybe even to her. He was about to step off the curbside to intercept her when a hand landed heavily on the woman’s artfully slumped shoulder. Michael Hone out of the twenty-third precinct, just two years on the force but he had the eye. She gave a heavy sigh and let herself be marched off.

“Meggie must be feeling her age,” Oscar said, coming up beside Jack. “Twenty years ago she was slippery as waterweed. She’d be half way to Brooklyn before you realized she was gone. O-ho, look now. Tell me, would that particular fat assed Roman Emperor there be an elected official who shall remain shameless?”

For a time they amused each other trying to put names to costumes: Cardinal Richelieu and the Count of Monte Cristo, a Capuchin Friar, Chinese merchants with eyes outlined in kohl, wizards, cowboys, Queen Elizabeth, the Goddess Diana with bow and arrow, a trio of young women with staffs and life-like lambs fixed somehow to their wide skirts.

“Money is wasted on some people,” sniffed a young woman whose clothes were thread bare but carefully mended. “I’d come up with a better costume than Bo Peep, you can be sure of that.”

A young man dressed as a Knight of Malta followed the trio out of the carriage. Covered head to foot in hauberk and chain mail and armor, he clanked his way up the walk, listing to one side and then the other like a ship in a storm.

“Look now,” a man’s voice called out loud enough to carry over the noise. “Won’t somebody get that poor mope an anchor?”

The appreciative roar of the crowd did not slow the Crusader in pursuit of his Bo Peeps, but every policeman within ear shot tensed. The draft riots were twenty years ago but it would be another twenty before they rested easy in the presence of any crowd; moods could shift from high spirits to violence without warning. Now shopkeepers and factory workers, clerks and charwomen, men with work bags and lunch buckets, they all cooed at the sight of a cape embroidered with pearls and rubies, but people just like this had burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum and hung innocent men from light posts to vent their rage.

There was only one reliable barometer of a group ready to go sour. Jack turned his attention to a half dozen children slinking through the crowd as easily and unobserved as cats. Six in this group, the youngest maybe seven, and if he had to guess he would identify them as part of the pack that slept in an alley alongside a German baker’s place of business on Franklin Street. The brick wall there was warmed by the ovens, which made the alley a coveted spot in the winter. It was one they had to fight to keep, and could lose at any time. If there was real trouble in the air the street urchins would disappear so quickly that they might have been an illusion.

“They’re settling down,” Maroney said. The crowd’s attention had turned to a modern day Shakespeare whose hat kept sliding down over his eyes, so that he tripped repeatedly over his shoes. The urchins laughed, wide mouthed, children still and in want of amusement.

Earlier today Jack had watched more fortunate orphans being taken into the austere custody of Sister Ignatia. In shock, overwhelmed, many of them had hung back, torn between the promise of food and the numbing familiarity of the filthy tenements where their parents had died. The woman doctor — Dr. Savard — had done a lot to calm them, her manner so matter-of-fact, without any trace of condescension or pity. Chances were a few of them would still try to slip away from the orphanage, but none of the children he had seen today would survive long on the city streets.

The Children’s Aid Society estimated that there were as many as thirty thousand orphaned or abandoned children in Manhattan, while the orphan asylums could take no more than twelve thousand at a time. The urchins who lived on the streets were underdressed, mostly shoeless, lice and worm-ridden, they ate only what they could steal or scrounge or beg, and had nothing so grand as a tenement to call home. Most of them refused to ask for shelter at any of the charities that were there to put them up, for the simple fear they would never be allowed to leave again, or would find themselves on a train headed west and a future even more uncertain than the bleak one before them. And so they slept huddled together in doorways or perched on fire escapes, and many of them died over the long winter, defeated by hunger and the violence borne of despair and bone-deep anger.

One by one the carriages pulled up and came to a stop, and footmen and coachmen lined up to open doors and assist ladies who could not see their feet over skirts and petticoats. Then they followed the walkway lined with potted trees and statues through the marquee and into the house where they would eat too much and drink even more.

The early high spirits had cooled a little. The crowd began to mill around, bored and eager for distraction.

Farther down the block the doors of a carriage opened suddenly. Two young men jumped down and then turned to help the ladies, all of them preferring to walk than to wait in a stuffy carriage. In response other carriage doors began to open, at first only one or two and then in a rush. Ladies in silver and buttercup yellow and blazing reds and deep purples let themselves be directed by their husbands and fathers and brothers, lifting skirts high to avoid puddles and manure and trash, giggling nervously and turning their faces away from the crowd, as if that would be enough to spare them the very attention their elaborate costumes were designed to engage.

As soon as the last party guests had disappeared into the house, the detectives could be away home. The uniforms and roundsmen would be here the rest of the night.

“Aren’t your nieces waiting for you in the kitchen, Maroney?” Jack nudged his partner just as the captain came around the corner, stopped dead, and pointed at them.

“And you were so close,” said Jack under his breath.

“I need youse inside.” Burns jerked his thumb over his shoulder as if there might be doubt about where. “Beaney’s in courtyard off the kitchen, he’ll point you in the right direction. There’s a rumor going around that some of Greenway’s boys have snuck in.”

“Dressed as priests, no doubt,” Oscar muttered. “Pranksters that they are.”

Burns gave a surprised and reluctant bark of laughter and then intensified his scowl to offset that small lapse.

“You’ll stay at your posts,” he said, “until I send word.” And he stomped off, cursing under his breath.

Jack said, “Greenway’s boys? That’s inventive, even for you, Maroney. Did you pass Burns another anonymous note?”

Oscar drew himself up and hooked thumbs in his suspenders, throwing out his chest. Easing into an imitation of Burns that would have got him booted off the force, he lowered his voice and took on a deep brogue.

“Touchin on and appertainin to dat matter, I’ve no idea as to what you may be inferin.”

Jack grinned. “To the kitchens, then?”

“And no sparin the horses.”

They crossed the street, passing a carriage that was well past its best days and in need of paint. Inside two very old ladies in powdered wigs sat waiting, their painted faces so somber that they might have been on their way to a funeral.

A couple had just stepped out of a far more elegant and fashionable carriage. The gentleman was older, his form narrow and posture brittle, and he leaned on a cane. His costume was simplicity itself: over one shoulder he had tossed a black cape with red silk lining. The red set off the tight black breeches and a short jacket, tailored to his form exactly.

“I think he’s supposed to be one of those Spanish grandees,” Oscar said. And as the man turned his face to the light he let out a soft grunt. “That’s Cap van Gilder,” he said. “Poor sod.”

Van Gilder’s eyes were a vivid bright blue and his complexion flushed. People sometimes called such extreme high color the red flag of the white death. Consumption was said to be gentle, a romantic death, but Jack could see nothing benign in the way it dragged the youngest and strongest and most promising out of the world.

“A damn good lawyer, and strange enough for one of his ilk, fair-minded. His mother was a Belmont.”

Oscar had an encyclopedic knowledge of the old knickerbocker families for a reason Jack had never been able to figure out. Now wasn’t the time to pursue that question, though, because van Gilder had stepped back to reveal the lady who stood beside him, one hand on his raised arm while with the other she tried to keep a shawl where it belonged. She let out a little cry of surprise and irritation as it slipped out of her grasp and fluttered away.

Above layers of silk gauze that moved with the breeze her shoulders and long neck were suddenly bared to the night air. In the light of the carriage lanterns her complexion took on the shifting iridescence of abalone: golds and pinks, ivories and smoky blues. The heavy dark hair twisted into a coronet and wrapped around her head set off the elegant curve of her throat. All these thoughts went through Jack’s head in the few seconds it took the footman to catch up her shawl and drop it over her shoulders. Half turned toward the footman to smile her thanks, he saw her face for the first time.

Oscar caught his jolt of surprise. “What? You acquainted?”

“No,” Jack said. “Don’t know van Guilder. It’s the woman I recognize.”

“Huh.” Oscar could fit more doubt into a single syllable than any man alive. “Where did you make the acquaintance of somebody like that?”

“On the Hoboken Ferry,” Jack said. “Surrounded by nuns and orphans.”

Oscar’s brow shot up high. “The lady doctor you told me about? What was her name–”

“Savard. Dr. Anna Savard.”

There was a small silence between them.

Maroney said, “A mystery, then. What good luck, they’ve got two detectives at the doorstep, just waiting to sort it all out.”

end excerpt

Pardon the Mess

This place needs a thorough cleaning so I’m in the process of combining the old weblog with this weblog, which is a messy undertaking. I can only spend a half hour a day on this project, so please bear with me until things shake out. There will be an index to help you locate particular subjects or posts, and I hope to get it launched by the end of the weekend.