Brookland (57 page)

“Perhaps,” Ben said, but he did not sound convinced.

Prue wondered what he wrote to the governor; for days after he sent the letter of resignation, he remained irritable. His workmen, who had come to rely on his good cheer, were all puzzled by his mood. Though they did not question him, when they could spare a few moments from chiseling out the grooves in the house posts, they would invite him out for a ball toss or a drink at the Twin Tankards.

He soon recovered himself, and set in earnest about seeking donations for the bridge. He and Prue had decided to withhold their own funds until they'd determined how much they could gather from their neighbors; they were willing to make as large a contribution as they
could, but as they did not need shares in the bridge as incentive to do this, they both thought it wise to use those shares to lure other investors. Prue had copied out the names of all the signatories to the original petitions before sending them to Mr. Stryker. Many of them were honest workers, whose support meant a great deal in spirit but could bring them no closer to having sufficient funds for construction; but those of greater means Ben copied onto a second list, and he began to solicit them, one by one. At first many were reluctant—as who would not be, when asked to give a great sum of money to an endeavor that could not be proven to have been wise until it had long been paid for—but slowly, one Brooklynite of repute after another began to make his donation. As if to prove he was not angry about Marcel's injury, Simon took out an entire share, in Peg's name; and John Boerum and Mr. Whitcombe, who had given so freely for Mr. Severn's church, also wrote large drafts. There were also myriad smaller contributions. Isaiah gave, though Ben and Prue tried to shout him down, telling him he should keep his money for his soon-to-be-four children; Will Severn bought a tenth of a share. When he had gathered as much money in Brooklyn as he thought possible, Ben began traveling to Manhattan to do the same, though again the boats presented him with a dilemma. (He rode Winship Gin's barges whenever he could, Losee's ferry when that was impossible, and Fischer's as a last resort.) In all, by the beginning of December, he had raised thirty-eight thousand in money and promises, which was not quite enough but would suffice for the time being. They would make up as much as they could from their own funds, when the need arose; and Prue expected her neighbors would be willing to contribute more, once they saw the great Gothic abutment rising from the strand.

Ben did not worry about the iron members the bridge would require—he could order nails locally as the need arose, and even the great rods to support the roadway could be had from Queen's County. But he hoped to have enough stone laid in before the North River froze to begin the abutments come spring. The first work after the thaw would be to dig the foundations, and the foundation stone for the Brooklyn side would take months to quarry; but once it had arrived, he did not want work to be delayed by ice floes on the river, or by the sluggishness of the mails. Ben wrote to the owner of the quarry, to inquire about a foundation stone and to ask him to send a first load of building material before the
hard frost. Meanwhile, he took four workers away from the addition to the house and had them hew posts for a gigantic new storehouse, near those for the liquor but closer to the water's edge, so that when the timber arrived, sometime the following year, it would have a dry place to lodge in.

The remainder of the autumn progressed quietly. Prue saw to distillery business as long as she could, but began, by early December, to feel faint much of the time, and the pressure on her spine became unbearable if she sat erect too long. With some regret, then, but also with bright expectation, she turned over the business to Tem and Isaiah, and retired to the house. Pearl and Abiah seemed delighted to have Prue at home. She could not sit reading an hour without one of them bringing her some dried fruit or a cup of tea, or interrupting her to ask something about the construction; and when Pearl was not out wandering, she took to sitting on the divan at her sister's feet, reading or working on the embroidery for which she no longer seemed to have quite such a passion. Having given up his role as county surveyor, Ben had little to do until it came time to hire ditchdiggers come winter, and he spent most of December working with the hired men on raising the new rooms' roof beam and battening the roof before the snow. He, too, stopped in to visit throughout the day, and brought newspapers and books to relieve the tedium of Prue's days—the first she had ever spent inactive.

As the month wore on, Prue began to feel some concern for her infant's welfare. Previously, it had been still whenever she had moved about, and had kicked when she sat at her desk or lay down for the night. Now she was resting, it should have found ample opportunity to exercise its arms and legs, but it did so less and less often, and with what Prue thought markedly decreased force. At last, in the middle of December, it quit moving altogether. Pearl and Abiah were full of reassurances:
Resting
, Pearl wrote, and Abiah said, “It'll wake up before long. You wait—when it comes out, you'll wish it were still sleeping.” But after a full day's silence, Prue began to worry in earnest, and Ben brought Mrs. Friedlander to examine her.

Jana Friedlander was an ancient old woman by then, half toothless, and with a slight palsy in her hands. But she felt over Prue's body thoroughly, then sat down beside her and took her hand. She kept quiet a long while, and Prue grew anxious she was not speaking because there
was nothing she could say. At last, looking at her steadily, Mrs. Friedlander said, “We shall wait and see what remedy time brings us.” She brought Prue two spoonfuls of dried herbs to eat, and as she chewed them, Prue recognized their taste. All that time, she had imagined the herbs had prevented conception; but she came to understand they had all along hastened out anything that might have been growing within.

By midafternoon, the baby's waters had broken. Later, Prue vomited all over her wedding sheets, gripped in a pain that blotted out her sight and squeezed the breath from her chest.

Here, too, she hesitated in writing to her daughter. She wanted to tell her everything—both to prepare her for what she herself would soon undergo, and to confide, all these years later, in someone who might understand the suffering she had experienced. At the time, who could have helped her? She had felt she could manage her labor if only she could have caught her breath for a moment, but waves of pain had kept crashing down upon her, as if trying to drown her. Even in the midst of her suffering, she had believed she could keep herself from being overwhelmed had this misery not been the wages of her sin, or if she could have looked forward to dandling an infant daughter or son. But she had known, without being told, the child was not to be. Pearl, Abiah, and Mrs. Friedlander had all ministered to her as best they could, but none of them had been able to assuage her pain. And although she had known they were attending her, she had been only dimly aware of anything beyond the purview of her travail; as she paused in writing to Recompense, she could remember nothing any of them had said to her that night. How could she tell this to her daughter? She longed to be heard, but could not burden her own child with such a confession.

Instead, she wrote to her:

A few hours past dawn, I was delivered of a stillborn girl child, in the saddest moment of my life until that time. How I pray you shall never see such issue from your womb. She was perfectly formed & of good size, with a shock of black hair like my sisters', but her skin was blue & looked as if it had been so a good while. Mrs. Friedlander did her best to revive the child, slapping & shaking her violently, rubbing her
vigorously with gin, and bundling her near the fire; but though I watched all this with some hope, in my heart I knew naught would avail. I had known this child,—your sister, my love; your own sister,—by her flips & kicks, and I saw she no longer abided in that corpse Mrs. Friedlander held.

I should wonder if it did not break your heart to know of the sadness that overtook your father when at last he was summoned to the room. I shall tell you only that he asked to hold her, and cradled her in his arms as if he had indeed received a daughter and not a mere sack of dust & ashes. How I wished it could be so! And how base & weak it seemed to have a human heart, that could seek to delude itself thus. I envied, in that moment, the stills of my manufactory, that did nothing but their appointed work, &
that
only when we caused them to.

Your Aunt Patience, when she came, removed the small corpse from our sight & then ushered your father from the room. When she had latched the door behind her, I grew angry & inquired to know why she had sought to banish my dearest comfort.

—Because it is not a man's place, she said, with what I thought unnecessary vehemence. Yet when she came to sit beside me, she, too, shed tears for my plight & for the child, and held fast my hand like a true friend. It was the first I ever felt a moment's kinship with her; & although I know you find her trying, I have never forgotten this kindness. When we had cried ourselves out, she removed from her pocket a gift for me. I rather expected some pastry, or perhaps an uplifting treatise, but what she had brought was a bottle of Dr. Philpot's nostrum. To see such a dubious thing in the hand of prim Patience Livingston nearly made me laugh, in spite of everything.—Oh, do'n't take it so serious, she said, obviously annoy'd with me.—I simply thought there are some ailments gin cannot cure.

She was correct, of course; and though I hope you will not think less of me for saying it, I accepted the Eugenic Water's oblivion with relief. Once I had tasted its succour, I believed I came to understand my mother's desire for it.

My dear love: We named your sister
Susannah
, in honour of my mother's mother, and your father & I stared off at the dull grey branches of the churchyard trees as we laid her in the ground.
Susannah
, a name of great beauty, & I thought how glad I should have been to
bestow it on a living child and call out—Sukey! into the streets when she was abroad making mischief, as I felt certain she should have done. I remember thinking with great bitterness that all around Olympia lived families far less fortunate than we, whose children nevertheless gamboled while we stood lamenting. I ate myself out with jealousy of them, though I knew this was not right.

Will Severn came often to our home to give comfort. Pearl always had some delicacy prepared for him, & he accepted these eagerly. I asked him one evening if he thought it possible my infants had been taken as sacrifice by the river. I regretted asking the moment I had done so, for the expression of horrour on his visage made his answer clear. He stood, came over to where I sat, and kissed the top of my head. He must have discomfited himself as compleatly as he did me, for when he stood again he was pink to the gills; yet said,—Bless you, Prue, I'll not have you be such a pagan as that. There is nothing so dark in all God's kingdom.

—All right, I told him. I see you are right.

—Take comfort in your faith. Your sister Pearl is full to overflowing with it; can you rely, in part, on hers?

—I do'n't know, I answered truthfully.

& I could not, Recompense. What good did it do me to know another did not doubt the rightness of God's plan? It only made my own doubt the more gaffing. It was with a heart & body suffused with bile I weathered the next few months. Oh, there was much to see to at the distillery, and every where I went, I was met with expressions of pity, but there was no solace in any of it. Children were all around,—Patience's, in particular,—and every one of them made me mourn; and as winter was the slowest season at the works, I had less than I felt my due to occupy my thoughts. Pearl began to spend as little time as possible in my company; & I assumed she had chosen to spend it in Will Severn's, who could appreciate her faith, rather than in mine who had once cursed her, & ever since reaped the terrible crop I'd thus sowed. This did not strike me unfair. I, too, would have avoided my own company, had such a feat of personal division been within my powers. Tem did her best to engage me on matters regarding the works; Abiah to cook the foods I most enjoy'd; but none of their ministrations could lighten my grief.

& do you see, love, why it was with such unity of purpose I threw myself into the building of the bridge, come spring? You see why I would have let the distillery founder, had that been necessary, and given my life blood to see that lifeless amalgamation of timber & stone rise from the shores of Brookland?

Dear Recompense, do you forgive me relating you this morbid tale when you are with child; & do you know I pray fervently,—with a faith restored in no small part by you your self,—that you shall know an outcome of naught but happiness.

With enduring love,

PWH

B
en and Prue recovered slowly from the shock of their loss. As they did, they set about preparing themselves for the momentous spring. Prue wrote an advertisement for the New York and Albany papers and the
Long-Island Courier
. She described the nature of the project and the work to be had, the wages the workers would be paid, and the dates on which potential laborers might apply. When she distributed the workers' pay that week, she asked them likewise to recommend any friends or relations for the work, and though she had felt no joy in weeks, their enthusiasm stirred her. The first date on which she had invited interested parties to apply for the work came early in March of 1800, and she and Ben were gratified when above thirty men from the near environs presented themselves. The second date, two weeks later, brought forty more, this time from farther afield—two from Baltimore, one from the village of New Hope in Pennsylvania, and a father and son from the wilderness in New Jersey. Others continued to arrive, singly and in small groups, as the weather improved. Most of these had some experience in building, and not one appeared drunk at the time of making his application, which Prue counted a blessing, given the proximity of the gin. A few had newly arrived from England and France; some had lost work or grown weary of their chosen professions; a handful were former sailors, who applied because they could no longer bear to leave home two and three years at a stretch. Ben was keen to hire them, as he felt certain they'd have learned good habits of discipline aboard ship. Men defected from mills up and down the river to volunteer; and a few came, it
seemed, simply to gawk at the models. Ben remained in constant communication with Thomas Pope. He consulted the elder bridge builder four times on his method for marking out the positions of the two footings across the water from each other, as it remained Ben's chief concern that he might mismeasure, and the twin levers would not meet precisely when they reached the middle of the straits. Ben also sent copies of his receipts for materials and a roster of the men he'd hired to the governor's office, where an independent auditor would determine whether the bridge's funds were being properly spent. Work would commence, if weather permitted, on Monday the twenty-fourth of March—the first full week of spring—but until then, the men were on holiday part-time, and Prue imagined Joe Loosely and the Philpots were doing a banner business.