Boston a novel
The pacifists had failed to keep America out of the war, but there was
still the question of peace terms, upon which depended the duration of
the fighting. So the agitation in Boston went on--until July, when the
marines at the navy yard took matters out of the hands of the Irish
mayor. There was a parade organized by the socialists, in support
of their program of no conquests and no indemnities; the police had
given the necessary permit, but all the same, the marines raided the
parade and broke it up, tearing the banners away from the marchers.
They finished by raiding the socialist headquarters, and dumping its
contents into the street. Cornelia was in this parade, and once more
encountered violence; but now she was panoplied in her dignity as a
“blue-blood,” and did not have to run.
Also--most dreadful circumstance--Elizabeth Thornwell Alvin, daughter
of the president of the Pilgrim National Bank, was in that riot! She
did not get into the papers, and it was a couple of days before some
thoughtful friend brought the news to her father. There were more
scenes, and Betty, in spite of all tears and protestations, was again
forbidden to visit her runaway grandparent. A program was proposed to
keep her in remote country places during the summer; but she vowed that
she would not go to that foolish Camp Putnam. “You might as well give
up, Mother; there’s no chance in this world of my marrying one of those
dull young men!”
“Betty, don’t be vulgar!”
“I am being honest, Mother. You know what Camp Putnam is for. But
you’ll have to realize once for all--my opinions make it impossible for
me to be a social success--there, or anywhere else.”
“What is it you want to do, child?”
“I want to go stay with Grannie--all the time.”
“But you wanted to go to college!”
“I’ve changed my mind. I realize that you don’t learn anything at
college.”
“Betty! What a silly thing to say!”
“Well, you don’t learn the things I want to learn. I got more from
being in that one parade than I did in a whole year at Miss Wilson’s.”
“So you want to study to be a leader of street-mobs!”
“Grannie is trying to find out the causes of modern war, and found a
society to teach them. It’s too late this time, she says, but next time
perhaps we can avoid being caught. And Mother, you must know that is
important--just as much so as the feminine endings in Shakespeare’s
plays, and whatever else you learn in college. And it’s the right kind
of thing for Boston people to do. When you’ve succeeded, then people
recognize it, and build a monument to you.”
“Oh! So you’re going to have a monument in Boston!”
“Not for myself--but for Grannie, yes indeed! Look at that Shaw
Memorial, Mother--people come from all over the United States to see
it. Those Negro troops are dead and turned to bronze, so they are safe
and respectable; but when they were live Negro troops, and Colonel
Shaw marched them down Beacon Street, the members of the Somerset
Club pulled down the shades. That was how the Union Club came to be
founded--some of the people on Beacon Hill were loyal to the Union
cause, and Grandfather Thornwell was one of them. That is history,
Mother; but I didn’t learn it at Miss Wilson’s, and I wouldn’t learn
it at Radcliffe. The Union Club is top-hole now, and it pulls down the
shades on us. But we shall have a ‘Peace Club,’ or something like that,
and fifty years from now we’ll be the highest high-hat in town, and
there’ll be an oil painting of Grannie in the lobby, and the family
will be proud as Punch!”
Thus Betty, citing precedents, according to precedent. It all seemed
so reasonable to her--and to her mother raving nonsense. Was it not
obvious that Colonel Shaw had upheld the hands of Abraham Lincoln--the
president, even though nothing but a vulgar rail-splitter! Now here
was Woodrow Wilson--a gentleman and a scholar, even though he did come
from the wrong university--here he was fighting for civilization, and
Cornelia and Betty were trying to stab him in the back.
“Yes, Mother”--for Betty had not yet learned Cornelia’s technique of
self-suppression. “It all depends on what history decides about this
war. Did we have to get in? Or could we have brought the nations to
better terms if we had stayed out?”
So they wrangled, until the tempers of both were frayed, and Deborah
exclaimed, “Your Father has lost all patience with you! You run a grave
risk that he will cut you off!”
“But, Mother, do you seriously think I should spend my life sitting
round waiting for you and father to die?”
“Oh, what things you do say!”
“But that’s what _you_ said! I’m not to do any thinking of my own
until you are dead and I’ve got the money. But what good would it be
to me then? I wouldn’t know any better to do with it than to make
yellow flannel petticoats for the poor--so ugly that the poor can’t be
persuaded to wear them!”
That was a dreadful utterance--a jeer at the most sacred institution
of feminine Boston, the “Sewing Circle”: a group of ladies of the
highest social rank, who met for luncheon at one another’s homes, and
afterwards sewed for the poor and gossiped for the rich. A fresh layer
was recruited every year out of the débutante set, and they constituted
the basis of selection for all other social activities; if you didn’t
get into the Sewing Circle, you never got into anything. And it was
really true that up to quite recently they had made yellow flannel
petticoats for the poor, and had stopped because it was no longer
possible to find any one to wear their product. Mrs. Rupert Alvin was
indignant at the presumption and ingratitude of the inhabitants of
East Boston and South Boston slums, and had favored going on making the
petticoats according to tradition, and sending them to Europe, where
the lower classes knew their place in life.
VI
Betty went to Plymouth, to spend a couple of weeks with her friend
Lucile Walker. She wrote, begging Grannie to come, and Mrs. Walker
added a formal invitation. But Cornelia did not want to visit rich
people; to her Plymouth meant Italians and the simple life. She wrote
to the Brinis, and found they had no boarder, so she went down for a
few days. A strange sensation, reëntering that so different world! She
would keep it as a place of refuge, a stimulus to the imagination, a
cure for the mental diseases of affluence. Here people said what they
meant, and it was possible to understand what they were doing. When
Vincenzo Brini got up at dawn and shoveled and raked and grubbed in the
dirt, he did not have to tell you, like Henry Cabot Winters, that life
was a game, and you must play it without thinking; no, Vincenzo would
say, “Moocha gooda vegetable!”--and escort you from row to row of his
treasures, and tell you the Italian names, and remember the English
names--after you had reminded him! Alfonsina wanted a wash-tub, for
perfectly sound economic reasons. Beltrando wanted a violin, and some
one to teach him to play it, and was going to earn the money by picking
berries.
The boys were playing baseball on top of Castle Hill, and the birds
sang, and the sun sparkled on the bay, and the pleasure-boats made
diverging tracks on the water. There were flowers in the woods
again--but alas, no Vanzetti to explain them and explore nature’s
mysteries. Incessantly they talked about him, the things he had said
and the things he had liked. He had gone away without saying good-by to
Trando and Fay, afraid lest their children’s prattle might reveal his
secret. Their mother had explained matters later--but it was hard for
them to be reconciled to his lack of trust.
Alfonsina had got a letter. Both Sacco and Vanzetti were in Mexico, and
the latter had found work as a baker. The Mexicans came to America for
jobs, and the Italians took what they left behind. Then came a letter
for Cornelia, and the family sat round the table and read and discussed
it. “I have obtained book for English education. I shall be greatly
cultured. Each word as I investigate in dictionary I secure in mind.”
They could picture him, sitting in a laborer’s hut, patiently looking
up long words by the light of a candle, and putting them together, not
always in the right order.
“It is primitive country, much hospitality of people, much to approve,
but not developed industrial. The great America has depraved us, we
feel in nature’s wildness lonely. I will be glad for receiving English
books for education reading, it is great limitation to obtain Italian
reading. Nick and me endeavor for improvement our companions of exile.
It is necessary for information of world developments. You have seen
Russian rivoluzion, but is necessary for explanazion that such is
lacking in true rivoluzionairy significance. It is of bourgeois nature,
for making country like capitalistic America. It is not of workers or
peasants, but Kerensky is tool of business men, and you will see that
the desires of Russia for acquirement of Constantinople will not be
abandoned, and the participating of Russia in the war will have this
significance. I will not proceed in this discussing because is possible
for letter to be censured, but will say that all nation in most cruel
conflict have imperialist ambition which will not abandon for beautiful
sentiments. I have long walk for obtaining stamp for letter so will
conclusion with expressing of sincere esteem, your Bartolomeo Vanzetti.”
VII
Cornelia went to call on the Jerry Walkers--she could not fail to do
so, being no longer in hiding. They lived in a big remodeled house on
a hilltop looking over the bay, and you would have thought them very
fashionable, if you had not known the dreadful fact that Mrs. Walker
was the daughter of a Pittsburgh steel manufacturer. Startling to
realize how one could have all this comfort, and even elegance, and
yet be totally non-existent from the social point of view. Mrs. Walker
was a fair, buxom lady, her manner to Cornelia a curious mixture of
deference due to a “blue-blood,” modified by the need of not seeming
too eager for social promotion. A strange world, in which a motor-ride
of six minutes brought you from Suosso’s Lane, where things were
simple and natural, to this hilltop mansion from which simplicity and
naturalness had been banished as by an enchanter’s spell.
But, a spell for ladies only! Jerry Walker, who had begun life as an
errand-boy, liked to talk with Cornelia about those days; and how the
Governor had helped him to a start. He liked to talk about his enormous
business, which he was organizing upon a new system. Not content with
owning all the felt-plants of New England, he had got a chain of
establishments to manufacture the things that were made of felt--shoes,
hats, hospital supplies; he had a jobbing business to distribute them,
and was not going to stop until he had retail stores, and even the
sheep to make the wool. He was eager about all this--a bouncing little
man with bristly yellow hair, standing up like a bull-dog’s. He was
extremely self-confident, a great business organizer, who knew it, and
frequently said it, adding prophecies. A highly dangerous state of
mind in New England, where all is secrecy, and instinctive repugnance
toward anyone who talks. Cornelia remembered that last discussion she
had heard between her husband and Rupert Alvin, when Jerry Walker and
his felt-plants had been the subject. It was easy to understand why
Rupert was so antagonistic to this talkative outsider, and resented his
control of a great New England industry, accusing him of all crimes in
the business list.
Just now Jerry Walker needed to expand his business for war purposes,
and needed to buy stocks of raw material for government contracts. He
ought to buy quickly, because the price of wool was leaping day by day;