“Now Mother’s gone, I reckon you to be the oldest stock, Nels,” says a younger brother, oddly named Squire Vanderlip. (He is not a squire but a lawyer.) Nelson nods, assuming the role of seniority with becoming gravity.
Upstairs the women are gathered in what had been Elizabeth’s personal parlour. On the wall hangs the other treasure that had come from New York, so long ago. It is the portrait of George III, so dear to Major Gage, and now framed in Victorian style, heavy with ebony and gilt. The women are chatting, sipping the cherry whisky, and now and then wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs broadly edged in black.
Confusion! Old Hannah is bursting in with fearful news. (She is not the “oldest stock” despite her great age, for she is a woman and, at least in theory, could change family alliance.) She whispers to Nelson, the oldest male stock.
“Nelson, what do you suppose those young ’uns are at?” She hisses the news in his ear, in a gust of evil breath.
“What in Tophet!” cries the oldest stock, forgetting the solemnity of the moment. He hurries out on the stoep, which is what these people, true to their Dutch ancestry, call the broad verandah or gallery that runs around three sides of the house.
What indeed? The children are following a wheelbarrow in which Flint pushes a large doll. They are weeping loudly and brandishing the black-bordered handkerchiefs with which they have all been supplied. They are playing funeral!
Uncle Nelson descends upon them, roaring, followed by a dozen outraged fathers. The children are seized and roundly tuned. Their weeping is passionate, for they do not fully understand how they have sinned, but they know that it must be sin that brings this sudden and painful public correction.
Only one of William McOmish’s girls is in this horrid mockery of a great occasion, and like a good father he seizes Malvina, turns up her skirts, and beats her soundly. She is profoundly humiliated, not only by the beating but by the horrendous fact that her drawers are thus exposed before the boys, although they themselves are being beaten and have no time to jeer at her.
The mothers, and aunts, and the minister, watching this massacre of the innocents from the stoep, agree that right, and justice, and morality have been vindicated, for the only way to bring up children is to beat the Old Ned out of them whenever He asserts himself.
“He that spareth the rod hateth his son,” says the minister, to general approbation, and, lest a few children dare to look resentful, he adds, “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee.”
This assertion of proper feeling gives added solemnity to the subsequent funeral, as the plume-decked hearse, with its four plumed black horses, precedes the black carriages to the church and the churchyard where the matriarch is to lie.
(14)
NOT ALL OF Malvina’s childhood is bitterness. I see her now, not much older, holding her father’s hand as they make their way to the principal hotel of the little city; where there is a wonder, very suitable for children, to be seen. William is pleasantly aware that he is providing his child with a great educational opportunity.
For who is holding a public levee, to which all comers, upon payment of a modest fee, are welcome? None other than General Tom Thumb, the famous dwarf. He is declared by his escort, the great P.T. Barnum, to be only twenty-five inches tall, though in fact he is thirty-one. But there he is, before Malvina’s wondering eyes, standing on a red-carpeted dais, with his tiny wife, Lavinia Warren, and his dwarf aide, Commodore Nutt (who is somewhat taller than Tom, but obligingly stands on a lower level). Even as the newspapers have reported, “his clothes are the production of the most distinguished tailors, and his gloves are of necessity furnished to order, for nothing so small and fairy-like were ever manufactured.” As for Lavinia, she is splendid in her wedding dress, a miracle of tiny ruffles.
William and Malvina join the queue who move slowly forward to shake hands with the living marvel. Or rather, to be touched lightly with his extended forefinger, because a rough handshake could hurt him.
Neither William nor Malvina see the look of fixed sadness in the eyes of the General and his lady who, like many artists, get their living by exploiting their wretchedness.
There is an occasional flash of romance in Malvina’s life when, in the streets of the town, she sees the four daughters of the Chief of the Six Nations Indians. These handsome girls wear splendid riding-habits – green velvet turned up with red – and have fine horses. The Johnson girls are certainly not squaws. They are princesses.
Was it the visit to Tom Thumb and the dashing Johnson girls that awakened Malvina’s appetite for marvels, for strange epiphanies and, as she grew older, the theatre? She yearned toward the theatre, without ever daring to imagine that she might herself be a part of it. Methodism had no place for any make-believe but its own, though from time to time entertainments took place in the basement of William’s great church that were theatrical in a gelded, sanctified way. Such a performance was an operetta for children called The Land of Nod, and Malvina, who could strum a little, coached Georgie Cooper, a limp boy with a poor ear, in his principal song:
I’m the jolly old King
Of the realm of dreams,
The dear little Land of Nod;
And whatever I say,
Or whatever I do,
My royal old head
Is depending on you;
Now isn’t that awfully odd?
Amusing, yes funny, and odd?
Whatever I do,
I depend upon YOU –
For – I’m King of the land of Nod!
Georgie’s voice was very near the adolescent break, and on the high note of “YOU” he was apt to be flat, or crack, but Malvina worked over him as if he had been a star of opera. After Georgie’s solo twelve little girls in cheesecloth executed the Dance of the Dreams, to a slow waltz. Malvina had trained them, and it was agreed that in this task she “showed talent.” Among the Methodists talent might show itself, but ought not to be dangerously encouraged.
When she began her working life even the McOmishes had to admit that some portion of her wages (she got four dollars a week) should be kept by herself, and out of this weekly dollar she spent twenty-five cents whenever it was possible on a ticket to the theatre. Her parents disapproved, but at seventeen she was hardened to disapproval and at the theatre she could ease her spirit, for two hours at least, in the presence of her idol, none other than Ida Van Cortland, leading lady of the visiting Tavernier Company. Oh, Ida Van Cortland, exemplar of womanly dignity and allurement to a hundred thousand spiritually starved girls as she bodied forth the miseries of Camille, that noblest of fallen – but spiritually exalted – women! When Camille expired in the arms of her Armand, Malvina experienced that sweet deliquescence of the loins which the truly sensitive feel when something profoundly affecting is made palpable on the stage.
Malvina cherished in a secret pocket of her purse the lines that had appeared in the local paper, the work of a poet who wished to remain nameless, but was easily recognizable:
TO MISS I V C
(after witnessing her mighty performance in “Forget-Me-Not”)
Touched by the fervour of her art,
No flaws tonight discover!
Her judge shall be the people’s heart,
The Western World her lover!
The secret given to her alone
No frigid schoolman taught her: –
Once more returning, dearer grown,
We greet thee, passion’s daughter!
The poet, as everybody knew, was none other than the man who had, so many years before, wooed Virginia Vanderlip, suffered her scorn, and lost her to William McOmish.
Fallen women exalted on the stage! Malvina had cause to know how ill that sat with the McOmishes. At seventeen she had suffered one winter from “a gathered throat” which the doctor (not Uncle Vanderlip) diagnosed as tonsils, and said that they must come out. So one Saturday afternoon, when she was free of the bi
cycle-and-carriage works, she made her way to the doctor’s office, and he removed her tonsils, without anaesthetic, for, as he explained, it was a quick operation and the discomfort trivial.
Walking home afterward, spitting blood into her handkerchief, she was overcome with pain and weakness and collapsed against a green picket fence, vomiting blood and losing consciousness. The woman who was sitting on the stoep behind the fence hastened to her assistance, took her into the house, and sent a messenger to William McOmish. In due course he arrived with the family horse-and-buggy, and took his daughter home, refusing to speak to the kindly woman. And when he reached home his wrath, and his wife’s, was terrible.
If Malvina had to faint, did she have to do it outside Kate Lake’s? A known house of ill-fame, where Kate Lake kept shameless girls who did unspeakable things for men of low character – the Mayor and two aldermen, among others – and was known to be a common recreation for the roisterers of the town? She had allowed herself to be taken up onto the stoep of that house where the Lord knows who might see her. Moral indignation clouded the McOmish home for days to follow.
Poor Malvina! My own grandmother, whom of course I had never known in this younger and tenderer aspect but whom, as I watched this film, in its dismal sepia shades, I suddenly knew as I had never known her in life. Knew that she had lived in the fear and bitterness of that loveless household and – it seemed to me now – had felt that fear and lovelessness even before she made her sad entrance into this world. Had known it perhaps in the womb.
(15)
IT WAS MCWEARIE, that avid collector of scraps of information which, when gathered together, made up his outlook on life, who had told me that it was now believed by some medical scientists, and the psychologists who were unknown in the nineteenth-century world of Malvina’s girlhood, that children in the womb are, in their enclosed world, nevertheless conscious of the atmosphere of the greater world that they would join after the months of gestation; join with deeply implanted feelings that they would never be able to shake off in the seventy or more years that lay before them. Children in the womb know no language but they hear sounds, tones of voice, sense calm and also turmoil and rancour. Malvina had been begotten in a world without love and, whatever her aspirations nurtured in the theatre and in happier circumstances, would never truly be at ease in a world where love in its manifold forms is the begetter of all that makes life sweet. Malvina might yearn for love, might try her best to engender love and stimulate it in her own life but would never be free to trust love or give herself to love without fear.
How many children are doomed before they make their entrance into this world to live with fear that lies so deep that they do not recognize it for what it is, having never known anything else? Ghosts cannot weep, or I would weep at what I know now when knowledge comes too late.
Knowledge that comes to me in scenes interspersed with scenes from Malvina’s youth, for as she makes her way toward whatever of love life has in store for her, there are scenes from the life of her parents, loveless and embittered. But, nevertheless, loyal. William and Virginia “stand by” one another, as they say, and call their quarrels “differences of opinion” and will not put a name to the hatred that possesses them. Marriage may not appear sacred, but it is certainly inviolable. William will not hear a word against Virginia, for that would reflect badly on his choice, his home, his way of life. The master builder, who is so deft with wood and brick and stone, so apt in the mathematics of stress and strain, of angles and oppositions, has no skill in matters of flesh and blood. It must be said that it would take a mighty man to soften Virginia, who is too witty and sardonic to yield readily to any kind of softness, and from the outset of the marriage she takes pleasure in planting barbs in her humourless, vulnerable husband.
(16)
NOT SURPRISINGLY they find a figure who can take on all of William’s anger and frustration, and all of Virginia’s self-righteousness, and exemplify both to the satisfaction of the warring parties. This is Virginia’s limping sister, Cynthia Boutell, known to the whole family as Aunt. For Virginia anything from the choice of a green kerseymere for a gown, to the daily iniquities, unreasonable demands, and shortcomings of William, and of course the bringing-up of her daughters, must be submitted to this oracle of an older sister, and what she calls Aunt’s Judgement is solicited every day of her life, for they are near neighbours. To William, Aunt is the mischievious old bitch of whom he spoke to Gil, during their midnight colloquy. In the fashion of the day he must submit to Aunt’s presence at his own table every other Sunday; on the alternate Sundays he and Virginia must have midday dinner with the Boutells and he must endure not only the acerbities of Aunt, but the unceasing good-nature and jocosity of her husband, Dan Boutell.
When dinner is over Virginia and Aunt settle to a satisfactory canvass of the week’s gossip, all of which passes under their unforgiving eyes in a passion of disapproval. Nor is current gossip alone the subject of their talk. They go back for years and even for generations, reconsidering and re-judging the faults and mishaps of others, the failures and miscalculations and, of course, the follies of people now middle-aged, who once were young. This is called by William “threshing old straw” but to Virginia and Aunt it is the cud of life, which they chew and re-chew with unfailing relish. The girls, Malvina and her sisters, “do the dishes” as girls should, for neither of the Vanderlip sisters can tolerate the slopdolly ways of a “hired girl,” and William in his decline could not afford one. The men, William and Dan, go for their inevitable Sunday walk, and Dan smokes one of his expensive cigars, which are not permitted in either house, and which William will not touch. Opium-eater as he is, he despises Dan’s slavery to the weed. Their dull walk circles a vacant lot that Negro children use as a playground; it is known as The Devil’s Half-Acre. What do they talk about?
“Ever think of joining the Oddfellows, Will?”
“Why would I want to get mixed up with that Tribe of Manasseh?”
“Well, the Masons, then? I could put you up, you know, whenever you say the word.”
“You know I don’t hold with secret societies. Nothing about me has to be kept secret.”
“Aw, come on! It’s just a way of getting together without the womenfolks. After Lodge the boys have a high old time. Keep it up till the last dog is hung, some nights.”
This expression refers to the Feast of the White Dog, an occasional ceremony of the local Mohawks; no non-Mohawks are admitted, but rumours – inevitably scandalous and derogatory – are current, including tales of the sacrifice of a white dog, but how or for what reason nobody knows, but everybody suspects.
“Why would I want to keep it up with Jem Hardy and Bob Holterman and that tribe? Let ’em wear their little white aprons and play the fool by themselves.”
“It’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys, sometimes. I’ve known the meetings to adjourn to Kate Lake’s. Ever been to Kate Lake’s, Will?”
“I should say not. What makes you think such a thing?”
“Oh, a lot of it is quite innocent. Kate sings a good song.”
“I can imagine what kind.”
“You’re too strait-laced, Will. Never let yourself off the chain. Say, last week I had to get down to Detroit on business, and overnight I seen this show, The Mulligan Guards at Atlantic City. Those girls! Lot of ’em and not a plain one in the lot. I bought a few postcards. Here, take a look.”
“You know I don’t hold with the theayter.”
“Well, then, here’s a few that ain’t from the theayter. I picked these up from the candy-butcher on the train, a couple o’ weeks ago. Ever see anything like that?”
These are cards of plump girls, wearing a look of simple innocence combined with allurement, and they are naked, though some of them wear black stockings.
“Put those things away, Dan. I don’t want to see ’em.”
“Come on, Will; you’ll want to see these. This set cost me five dollars,” Dan whispers. “Six ways o’ doin
’ the Dirty Job. Did you know you could do it like that?”
“Dan Boutell, you ought to be ashamed! A married man!”
“Not all that married, Will. I don’t get much o’ that. Cynthy says it’s disgusting, even among marrieds. These cards sort o’ help out, when a fellow’s lonely. You get much o’ that, Will? – Aw come on now, don’t walk away mad! Wait for me, Will!”
(17)
DAN HAS GRAZED Will on a very sore place, because Will doesn’t get much of that. Virginia’s ideas about the intimacies of marriage come directly from Aunt: even among marrieds, it’s disgusting, and the fact that it leads to children – and a man has a right to expect children, however shameless their begetting – is just one of God’s mysteries, and makes a decent woman wonder sometimes what God can have been thinking about when he set it up that way. As a temptation to men, Aunt says. Aunt has no children, for the best of reasons.
A man has “marital rights,” and William often reminds Virginia that it is so. Their bodily unions are infrequent, and since the birth of Minnie have been wholly discontinued. But in William, that gaunt, strong Highlander, desire has not died, and there are frequent scenes of proposal – never pleading, for why should a man plead for his rights? – and contemptuous rejection. William will not force her, though there are times when he wonders if he might not kill her.
His desire is a torment, and the last such scene, two years after the birth of Minnie, is brief and bitter.
I see it in full, for I cannot turn my gaze from the cinema screen, much as I wish to do so. I am condemned to see. The unhappy couple are preparing for bed. Both are in their nightgowns, and before she retires Virginia squats over the chamber-pot, for there is no modesty between them about this necessity. The sight strikes up the flame in Will, for it is one of his oddities that his wife in this position appears deeply erotic to him. As she is giving her hair a final brush – a hundred strokes each night, to brush in the bay rum she uses as hair-dressing – he approaches her, his arms reaching out to enfold her. She can see him in the mirror, and sees that the front of his nightgown pokes out comically over his erection. With a scowl she turns and strikes him on his penis with the ebony back of her hairbrush, with more force perhaps than she intends. He makes no sound, but retreats, nursing his hurt, doubled over in pain. That is the last instance of sexual activity in the McOmish household.