Clara and Mr. Tiffany (11 page)

“No, you wouldn’t. Two artists in a marriage make for a slippery fish of an existence.”

“I’d be willing to be the steady breadwinner, though it wouldn’t be
for conservative Mr. Tiffany, and you could continue to carry on with Hank and Dudley.”

He patted my cheek. “Generous of you, but that wouldn’t satisfy you, and you know it, nor would it do your reputation any good.”

“It was just a wild thought.”

“Besides, I’m irresponsible. He’s responsible. I’m capricious. He’s merely precious.” He made it rhyme, and then giggled at his own cleverness.

“True. You are capricious.”

George and Edwin were brothers in blood but not in temperament. Where Edwin read about great artists of the past, George himself was a painter and a designer. While Edwin became sullen in temperatures below forty degrees, George was wild about ice skating. While Edwin scrupulously saved half of every paycheck, George scrupulously spent all—on paint and canvas, opera and concert tickets, dinners at the Waldorf Hotel—and sometimes had to appeal to Edwin to tide him over. To George, “the humanities” meant the enjoyment of art and theater. To Edwin, it meant the struggling immigrants on the Lower East Side. I gave serious, depressing novels to Edwin, like Stephen Crane’s new
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
. With George I gave myself over to frivolity and singing popular tunes.

Edwin’s thoughtful aspects had revealed themselves modestly during the last two years. He had deep compassion for people, an understanding of social forces, and an appreciation for history as a record of the triumphs and tragedies of the common man—all of which I admired.

While I was putting on my one pair of earrings, George peered through my kaleidoscope. “Oh! Ah! I see a bright future for you.”

“You have to leave. I have to get dressed.”

“You have to think about it.”

“You have to be quiet about it.” I shooed him out with a wave of both hands.

It was hard to imagine that they were brothers. Edwin was economical with his emotions, spending them on ideas and near strangers, whereas George was a spendthrift of sentiment in all directions. Edwin demonstrated his emotional range by a tipping of his head, a raised eyebrow, a slow smile I cherished all the more for its rarity when it was directed
at me. George demonstrated his by a flapping of arms, a loud whistle, a few dance steps. Edwin stated, whereas George cooed.

As I came downstairs, I heard Edwin talking to Mr. Hackley about Utah becoming a state. Mr. Hackley objected because of the polygamy practiced there. Edwin was more tolerant, reasoning that, like the other love that cannot be named, it fell under Thomas Jefferson’s category of the pursuit of happiness. He cut off the conversation and stood up when he heard my taffeta skirt rustle on the stairs.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he said, and he did smile, broadly, genuinely, handsomely. There was something more in it than usual, something barely contained about to burst out.

He traced a circle in the air, and I spun around. “A regular Gibson girl, you are,” he said. “I’m enchanted.”

I glanced at George, whose expression was like a boy having just won a game of marbles. I put on my hat at the front entry mirror. It was my old black velvet, but I had taken it to a milliner who spruced it up with curled black feathers and a black satin ribbon.

George pursed his lips and shook his head. “No.” He tugged it to one side a bit. “There. Divine.”

I had the feeling he wanted to be a mouse in my pocket, peering out into this evening.

Edwin helped me on with my opera cloak and donned his top hat, which seemed to signal that great things would happen tonight. We were off in a hired carriage to the Tiffany Ball at the Majestic Hotel, uptown on Central Park West and Seventy-second Street, where new luxury apartments overlooking the park were creeping northward. A yearly winter event, the ball was a magnanimous thing for Mr. Tiffany to provide for his employees and friends.

A bevy of footmen in livery met us at the hotel entrance. Inside, butlers in tuxedos ushered us into the upstairs ballroom, where mirrors multiplied the massive flower arrangements. Beneath hanging crystal electroliers, guests were announced as they approached the receiving line. I caught the names of people Mr. Tiffany had mentioned to me—the notoriously wild, redheaded architect Stanford White; the textile designer and Mr. Tiffany’s onetime partner, Candace Wheeler; the painters Samuel Colman and William Merritt Chase; and the designer
Lockwood de Forest. I was surprised to hear Mr. Tiffany’s rival, John La Farge, announced. Apparently their competition had a veneer of gentility.

Mr. Nash, manager of the glass factory; Mr. McIlhenny, the chemist; Mr. Platt, treasurer; Mr. Mitchell, business manager; and Mr. Belknap, artistic director, all wearing black swallowtail coats, stood in the receiving line like a quintet of starched penguins. Mr. Belknap was the only one with a red rather than white carnation. I felt proud of Edwin in his paisley silk waistcoat under his black frock coat. Mr. Tiffany was charming everyone at the end of the line. With a flutter inside, I anticipated my turn to be greeted.

“How canny you are, Mrs. Driscoll. You knew that emerald green is my favorite color.”

“I don’t believe you have a favorite color, Mr. Tiffany. It would cause you pain to leave a single color out of your affections.”

He introduced his wife informally as Lou. A socialite at ease, bedecked in orchids, she wore a silk gown in heliotrope to match the flowers, designed, no doubt, by Worth or Paquin. She was gracious, sensuous, and over-jeweled—a hothouse bloom. When I introduced Edwin as assistant to the director of University Settlement, she became animated rather than polished, and spoke of her own charitable work for the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, particularly its tenement outpatient and hygiene service. Later they had a lengthy conversation that left me free to dance with Mr. Belknap, whose feet, I noticed, were definitely shorter than mine.

I couldn’t look him in the face at that close range. The eyebrows. At a distance of eight feet, they looked natural enough, but four feet was dicey and one foot impossible. For our opera and philharmonic evenings, I’d had to train myself to look at his meticulously clipped and waxed mustache.

As we spun around in a waltz, I could see over his shoulder, and spotted Frank, the deaf-and-dumb janitor, for once not in his dungarees, radiant. With his eyes riveted to my every move, he bobbed his head in time to my steps.

When the orchestra took a break, Mr. Belknap introduced me to Candace Wheeler, and I asked her how she became interested in the decorative
arts. She explained that at the Philadelphia World’s Fair almost twenty years earlier, she had seen a needlework exhibit of the Kensington School in London, which provided training and commercial outlets in needlework to what the English called “decayed gentlewomen.” Seeing a similar need in America, she established the Society of Decorative Art.

“You make it sound like it happened easily.”

“Oh, no. It was a challenge to convince women that their handwork was worthy of monetary remuneration, and wasn’t just something they did to decorate their own linens.”

She informed me that Mr. Tiffany was on the advisory board, and that led to their eventual partnership in the early interior decorating firm of Associated Artists.

“He’s a reckless genius, more in love with ways than means. He was haunted by the windows of Notre Dame and Chartres in those early days.” She reflected a moment, and then added, “I owe to him my change of perspective from running a philanthropic organization and amateur educational scheme to running a business. I’ll never forget the day he declared, in that boastful way he has, ‘We’re going after the money that there is in art.’ ”

I wondered if she knew that he hadn’t “gone after” it with the success he had claimed he would have. Instead, he had “gone after” beauty, whatever the cost.

I told her that there were thirty-five girls in the Women’s Department now, and she commended me enthusiastically, which made me feel wonderful. Almost all of them were here. The younger ones were chatty and nervous in their best muslin frocks. A few clung to me and ogled Edwin. I was sure he would be the subject of whispers in the studio next week.

Wilhelmina had her butcher boy in tow, the Romeo she prattled on about to anyone who would listen, proclaiming how much he loved her. Fortunately he cleaned up pretty well and didn’t appear to have a film of beef blood on his knuckles. The free champagne, which her constitution wasn’t accustomed to, had gone to her head, and she promenaded around the room, swaying like a tree in a windstorm, talking to anyone who gave her a glance, and after each circumnavigation, with flushed face and chest heaving, she gave me a report.

Leaning toward me, she said, “Take a look at Mrs. Tiffany’s fingers. That isn’t no chipped glass in those rings. Those are genuine rubies and emeralds.”

“Oh, so you’re not only an expert on birds. You’re a gemologist now. What’s next? Archeology?”

She was having the time of her life, and I was glad for her.

“How much of this night are you going to tell your mother?”

“Not one stinking word. I don’t live with her now.”

“Then where do you live?”

“I stayed with my aunt for a while, but she got to tattling to my mother, so I moved in with some girls who work at the big Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. They’re not allowed to talk at work. You’ll never find me working in a jail like that.”

Off she went blithely on another circuit of the room while Candace Wheeler told me about the success of her Women’s Exchange in finding markets for women’s crafts. Wilhelmina came back to report that Mr. Belknap smelled like a flower and wore a paper collar. After peering at Edwin out of the corner of her eye, she whispered, “I oughta tell you that Mr. Tall-enough gives you the glad-eye every time you’re not looking his way. Has he asked you to marry him yet? He looks rich enough.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Wilhelmina.”

God love her, she had become a favorite.

I was proud of Edwin’s ability to mingle as comfortably with Wilhelmina’s gentleman butcher as with Mr. and Mrs. Tiffany. I found Edwin more than adequate in the waltz but a little less comfortable with the new two-step. It didn’t matter. What did matter were the little signs of affection he gave me. Still, I didn’t want to fall prey to a man just because I wanted to have that weightless gladness of being in love.

In the carriage coming home, he said, “Mrs. Tiffany is a marvel of the double standard. She can give attention to a tenement mother’s hygienic needs in the morning, and spend enough at Delmonico’s that evening to feed that mother’s family for a year.”

It was true. We straddled a double world.

“Better that than her not doing anything at all, Edwin.”

Although he was restless on the way back to Irving Place, he did not get out of the carriage in front of the boardinghouse. Instead, he took
both my hands in his, and with a deep breath that raised his chest, he said without preamble, “I’m in love with you, Clara. You must know that.”

An instant of perilous pleasure flared in me and then subsided just as quickly.

“What’s more, I want you to love me. There’s a kind of love that makes you feel like you can do anything. That’s what I feel for you. Have I only imagined that you could give that love to me?”

I wasn’t going to answer that. I certainly didn’t know.

“I have a plan for us. A business opportunity has been offered to me, which I’m keen to pursue. It’s to assist in managing a coffee plantation owned by a stock company in Mexico near Veracruz. I want you to come with me, Clara. As my wife.”

My throat and face burned as though I had gulped hot coffee. Yearning and skepticism and the incipient love I had kept at a distance tumbled chaotically, each holding an instant’s sway.

“We would have a plantation house built to suit us.”

Mexico. I had always been fascinated by Mexico. Artists needed travel to deepen their well of creative sources. Was I to limit myself to Tiffany as my sole source of inspiration?

“If I accept for two years, I would earn enough to set us up in a fine apartment like we saw tonight overlooking Central Park—I know how you love it. I’ve thought of little else for half a year. It has taken me that long to muster the courage to ask. If I had let this chance slip by, I was afraid I’d never ask. Please, Clara, tell me you will.”

“I … This is too much to grasp all at once. I’m so fully involved at the studio. Mr. Tiffany has a policy not to keep on any married women.”

I felt him back away on the carriage seat. “You never told me that.”

“I never had occasion to.”

He rallied enough to say, “You do care for me, don’t you? Tell me that.”

I touched his smooth cheek in the darkness. “Yes, I do care for you.” And I felt myself caring more and more.

“You know that I’m reliable. My parents in Connecticut are in favor of the plan and will provide for our needs in the transition.”

“How can you leave your work at the settlement house?”

He was quiet a moment. “It’s draining, sometimes overwhelming. It
will still be there when I, when we, come back, and I’ll be in a better position then to help in larger ways. In politics, I mean.”

I felt his hands tight around mine.

“And George? He knows about this?”

“Yes. He will come twice a year to paint. You could paint with him. Will you at least consider it?”

I gave him the slightest of nods, and instantly felt the turn of the kaleidoscope, a faint clatter of glass in colors of emerald and ruby and sapphire.