New York

“To be as rich as John Jacob Astor,” he said with a grin. Perhaps that was a little ambitious—yet not impossible. After all, the Masters were already rich, whereas everyone knew Astor’s story. A poor German immigrant from the little town of Waldorf, Astor had come from his brother’s London musical instrument workshop to seek his fortune in the New World, and somehow landed up in the good old fur trade. Before long he’d entered the China trade too.

  The richest China trade, of course, was in drugs. British merchants, supported by their government, ran huge quantities of illegal opium into China. Recently, when the Chinese emperor had protested at what this was doing to his people, the righteous British government had sent warships to attack him, forced the Chinese to buy the drugs, and taken Hong Kong for themselves as well.

  But Astor was no drug dealer. He’d sold the Chinese furs. Importing silks and spices in return, he’d multiplied his profits. And with those profits, he’d made the simplest investment in the world: he’d bought Manhattan land. He didn’t develop it, usually—he just bought it, leased it, or sold it on. As the city was rapidly expanding, the land values shot up. He’d quietly continued the process, become a revered city elder, the patron of Audubon, of Edgar Allen Poe, and even founded the Astor library. Last year, he had died worth twenty million dollars, the richest man in America.

  “You think the railroad business could be that big?” Hetty asked.

  “I do,” said Frank. “When I was a boy, my father took me to the opening of the Erie Canal. That canal alone transformed the shipping of grain and caused a huge expansion of places like Albany. Given time, the new railroads will far exceed what the canals accomplished—they’ll change the whole continent. Unlike canals, they’re easy to build, and the speed at which freight, and people, can travel is going to increase by leaps and bounds. Land prices are going to rise all the way along the new railway lines, if you can just figure out the right places. There’ll be opportunities to invest in the railroads themselves, as well.”

  “Let’s look at the maps, then,” said his wife, with a smile.

  She’d always been his partner, right from the start. Always supported him, whatever he wanted to do, joined in his interests and enthusiasms. Once, when someone had asked him when he’d first been sure he wanted to marry Hetty, to their great surprise they’d received the answer: “It was the Croton Aqueduct that did it.” But it had been perfectly true.

  If the old water supply of New York had been inadequate for decades, the city’s eventual solution was magnificent. Forty miles to the north the River Croton, which ran into the Hudson, was dammed to make a huge reservoir. From there, water was carried south in a covered canal until it crossed by bridge over the Harlem River onto the north end of Manhattan. Passing over two more high aqueducts on the way, it flowed down through conduits into a thirty-five-acre receiving reservoir, which extended between Eighty-sixth and Seventy-ninth Streets on the city plan. Another five miles of conduits and pipes brought water from the receiver to Murray Hill, where the distributing reservoir, a splendid building just below Forty-second Street, and which looked like a fortress, held twenty million gallons.

  The whole thing was a masterpiece of engineering, and it hadn’t surprised Hetty in the least that, just before its completion in 1842, while they were still courting, Frank had said that he wanted to inspect every inch of it. What astonished him, and everyone else, was that she cheerfully announced: “I’m coming too.”

  And so she had. They’d taken the family carriage up Manhattan, right across Westchester County to the Croton dam, where an engineer had been delighted to show them the sluices and the start of the canals. They’d driven down, looked into the gatehouses at the Harlem River and walked across the bridge. They’d inspected the aqueducts, the reservoirs, the pipes. The whole expedition had taken four days, and many miles of walking.

  And finally, right in front of that fortress-like reservoir at Forty-second Street, Frank Master had turned to this remarkable young woman, gone down on one knee and asked her to marry him—which, all in all, Hetty reckoned was worth the walk.

  Now, therefore, with the maps spread out on the table, Frank Master and his wife spent a happy half-hour looking at the towns and territories up the new Hudson railroad that seemed most promising for future development. And they were still busily engaged in this manner when a maid announced that Miss Keller and the Irish girl had arrived.

  “I want to see this Irish girl, Hetty,” said Master, “because we need to be very careful.”

  “Most of the servants in this city are Irish, Frank,” his wife pointed out.

  “I know. But there’s Irish, and Irish. There are plenty of respectable ones. The people to avoid are the Irish from Five Points—half of them are so weak that they’re prone to disease.”

  “Someone’s got to help them, Frank.”

  “Yes, but we’ve young children to consider. And the ones that aren’t sick are criminals. Gangs of them. Look what happened at Astor Place the other day.”

  That had been an awful business—a riot of Irish from the Bowery, set off by the appearance of an aristocratic English actor, at the new Astor Opera House, no less. One could understand the Irish blaming England for the horrors of the Famine, but with revolutionary elements causing disruptions all over Europe that year, the New York authorities weren’t taking any chances. The militia had been called in, and they’d fired on the crowd. A hundred and fifty wounded, and more than twenty dead.

  “I don’t want any Irish from the Bowery,” Master said firmly.

  “Gretchen says she’s very quiet and respectable.”

  “She may be. But I want to know about her family—are they respectable people too? And there’s another thing to watch out for.”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Tammany Hall.” It was as obvious to Frank as it had been to his ancestors that the better sort, the solid men of property, should rule the city. The men that Tammany Hall elected in the city wards were just the kind to beware of. “I don’t want any of those people insinuating themselves into this house,” he declared.

  “I’ll be careful, Frank,” said Hetty.

  “I want to know about her family,” Frank repeated. “No Five Points, no Bowery, no drinking or gambling, and no Tammany Hall.”

  When they came from Irving Place into Gramercy Park and Mary saw the size of the house, she took a deep breath. They went to the trades entrance, but in no time a maid in a starched cap led them through the stately main hall, across the echoing marble floor, and into a sitting room with a thick Turkish carpet, where she told them they might sit on a padded sofa.

  “Oh God, Gretchen,” whispered Mary, “will you look at this place? I wouldn’t know what to do in a house like this.”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Gretchen. “She’s very nice.”

  As if to confirm this fact, Hetty Master appeared at the door, and sat down in an armchair opposite them.

  “So you are Mary,” she said pleasantly. “And Gretchen, of course, I know very well.” She smiled. “You’ve been acquainted with each other a long time, I believe.”

  The lady of the house was wearing a pale brown silk gown. Her hair, which had a hint of red in it, was parted in the middle and neatly arranged in ringlets over her ears. She was still young, about thirty, Mary guessed. And she certainly seemed friendly. But even so, at this moment, all Mary could manage was a nervous, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gretchen came to her aid.

  “When I first came to New York, Mrs. Master, Mary and her family were very kind to me. Mrs. O’Donnell, God rest her soul, helped me to learn English.” She turned to Mary with a smile. “There’s been hardly a day since when one of us hasn’t been in the other’s house.”

  Mrs. Master nodded with approval, and Mary marveled at her friend’s cunning. Gretchen wouldn’t set foot in the O’Donnells’ lodgings if she could help it. But since Mary was often at the Kellers’, technically the statement was true.

  “Yet y
ou seem very different,” Mrs. Master remarked.

  More than you know, thought Mary. But amazingly, Gretchen contradicted her.

  “I’m German and Mary’s Irish,” she said, “but we both come from big farming families—my father has cousins farming in Pennsylvania—so I suppose farming families all think the same way.”

  Mary knew about the Kellers’ farming cousins. But the O’Donnells’? Sometimes, after a drink or two, her father would speak of the family land back in Ireland, though God knows whether that meant her ancestors had lived in a farmhouse or a hovel. But Gretchen made it sound so solid and respectable.

  “And your two families live near each other in Germantown?”

  “Yes,” said Gretchen. She smiled. “Mr. O’Donnell goes to my uncle for his cigars.”

  “And what does your father do?” Mrs. Master asked Mary, looking straight at her.

  “He’s a mason,” said Mary.

  “I see. Can you tell me any of the places he has worked?”

  “Well …” Mary hesitated. She didn’t want to lie. “A mason’s work takes him to different places. But I know,” she added hopefully, “that for a long time he worked on the Croton Aqueduct.”

  “He did? The Croton Aqueduct?” For some reason, Mrs. Master looked delighted. “Did he work on the bridges and the reservoirs as well?”

  “I think so, ma’am. I think he worked on all of it.”

  “I know every inch of that aqueduct,” Mrs. Master said proudly.

  What this meant Mary couldn’t imagine, but she bowed her head respectfully.

  “Perhaps you saw him there, Mrs. Master,” ventured Gretchen.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Master, more pleased than ever, “perhaps I did.” She seemed to catch herself for a moment. “Is your father connected in any way to Tammany Hall?”

  “My father? Oh no. Not at all.”

  “Good. So tell me, Mary,” she continued, “what experience have you of household duties?”

  “Since my mother died, ma’am, I have kept house for my father,” Mary answered. “I’ve had to do everything.” She saw Gretchen nodding vigorously. It’s lucky the lady can’t see the place, she thought.

  “You’re not afraid of work, then?”

  “Oh no,” said Mary, “not at all.” At least she didn’t have to think about that.

  “But”—Mrs. Master suddenly looked thoughtful—“if your father relies upon you to keep house for him now, Mary, would you not be deserting him, rather, if you came to live here?”

  Mary stared at her. Then she and Gretchen looked at each other. They hadn’t thought of that. The question was so logical, yet the truthful answer would demolish the entire edifice of respectability that Gretchen had just built up. Mary felt herself going pale. Whatever could she say? She couldn’t think of anything.

  But already Gretchen had turned to Mrs. Master. She was speaking quite calmly.

  “I can’t tell you this for certain, Mrs. Master,” her friend was saying, “but”—she seemed to hesitate for just a second before continuing—“if perhaps there was a widow who was thinking of marrying Mr. O’Donnell, a lady used to running a house of her own …”

  Mary’s mouth opened. What in heaven’s name was Gretchen talking about? A respectable lady marry John O’Donnell? Had she gone out of her mind?

  But Gretchen was blithely ignoring her. She was talking to Mrs. Master as if she were imparting a secret that Mary mightn’t want to discuss.

  “If that was the case, and the lady had strong opinions of her own about how to run a house …”

  And now Mary understood. She stared at Gretchen in wonderment. How was it possible that her neat little friend, with her angel face, could be making this up so easily as she went along? How could she tell such lies? Well, not technically a lie, she wasn’t actually saying this widow existed—only asking: what if she did? But all the same … Mary knew she couldn’t have done such a thing herself in a thousand years.

  “It would be difficult for Mary, then, to live in that house,” Gretchen explained. “It may seem foolish—”

  But Mrs. Master interrupted her. “It does not,” she said, very firmly, “seem foolish at all.”

  Frank Master was just looking at Saratoga on the map when Hetty appeared. She was alone.

  “The girl was no good?” he asked.

  Hetty smiled. “Actually, she’s perfect. Very respectable. She and Gretchen live practically next door to each other. In Germantown.”

  “I see. Her family?”

  “The father’s a mason. A widower, about to marry again, I think. And guess where he worked for years?”

  “Tell me.”

  “The Croton Aqueduct.” There was a gleam in her eye. “Who knows, he may have seen you propose to me.”

  “Ah.”

  “I do feel, Frank,” she said, “that this is fated.”

  Frank Master gazed affectionately at his wife. He wasn’t a fool. He knew when he was beat.

  “We’d better hire her, then,” he said.

  Crystal Palace

  1853

  THE EASIEST DECISION that Frank Master ever had to make in his business career occurred in the summer of 1853. He was standing in his counting house. It was a nice old brick building, with a warehouse behind, that looked out onto the South Street waterfront. The sun was shining brightly on the ships crowding the East River beyond. Two of those ships belonged to him—one a sailing ship, a rakish clipper bound for China, the other a side-wheel steam vessel about to depart for the isthmus of Panama. The cargo of clothes she carried would be taken overland across Panama, then carried by another steamer up to California. The people who’d been flocking to the gold-rush towns in the last few years might, or might not, find gold. But they needed the tough, durable clothes manufactured in New York, and Frank Master had made plenty of money shipping them.

  Master was in cotton, tea, meat-packing, property speculation. But he wasn’t getting into this deal.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I want no part of it. And if you take my advice you’ll give it up before the commodore comes back. Because when he does, it’s my belief, he’ll skin you alive.”

  “Won’t be much he can do,” said one of them.

  “He ain’t so tough,” said the other.

  “Wrong,” said Master, “on both counts.”

  There was always something Cornelius Vanderbilt could do.

  Steam-powered vessels had been in use on the River Hudson for more than thirty years, yet the steamship had taken a surprising time to enter the Atlantic trade. A British rail company had started it off, but it was an enterprising Loyalist family named Cunard, who’d fled to Canada a couple of generations back, who’d first run steamships successfully across the ocean. The New York men aimed to catch up quickly, though. And none had been more daring than Vanderbilt.

  He came from old New Yorkers, English and Dutch, but he’d started poor—even poorer than Astor. Hetty Master didn’t like him. “That foul-mouthed waterman,” she called him. It was true that he’d started life rowing a boat, and his language was certainly colorful, but he had genius, he was ruthless, and his steamships had made him one of the richest men in the city. Crossing the commodore was a bad idea.

  Frank Master never crossed Vanderbilt. He’d made friends with him. When Master had wanted to run steamships down to Panama for the California trade in which Vanderbilt was powerful, he’d gone to the commodore and asked him what he thought.

  “How many ships?” the commodore had asked.

  “A couple, maybe.”

  “All right.” Vanderbilt had favored him with a curt nod.

  “You asked his permission?” Hetty had said in disgust.

  “Better than being run out of business.”

  Yet while the commodore was abroad, these two men, both employed by Vanderbilt, were planning to steal a piece of his empire.

  You had to admire the audacity of the plan. Instead of running his goods across Panama, the commodore had op
ened up a cut-price route across Nicaragua, and taken a thousand sailing miles off the journey.

  “But the government of Nicaragua ain’t too strong,” the two men told Master. “What if we could finance a revolution there? Put in our own man as president, who’ll give us an exclusive contract to run goods across the place, and leave Vanderbilt out?”

  “You really think it could be done?”

  “Yes, and for no great outlay. Do you want in?”

  “Gentlemen,” said Master with a laugh, “I’m not afraid to topple the government of Nicaragua, but annoying Cornelius Vanderbilt? That frightens me. Please don’t include me in your plans.”

  He was still chuckling about the two rogues an hour later, when he went uptown to meet his wife.

  Hetty Master stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth, with the great fortress of the distribution reservoir behind her. Half the world was passing by the place that day, so you might have expected her to be taking some notice of them. Or you might have thought, at least, that she’d be looking out for her faithful husband who was coming to meet her.

  But she wasn’t. She was reading. Just standing there like a statue, under her parasol, and reading.

  If she’d taken any notice of the scene around her, she might have reflected that close by, nearly eight decades ago, poor George Washington had beaten his troops with the flat of his sword, to try to stop them running away from the redcoats. Or she’d surely have recalled that this was where Frank proposed to her. But she didn’t. She just read her book.

  Of course, she’d always loved to read. Back in the days when she and Frank were courting, the great Charles Dickens had come over from London to begin his triumphal tour of America. People had turned out in thousands, and she’d dragged Frank to no less than three events to see her favorite author, and listen to him read. “I love his characters and stories,” she’d told Frank, “and his plea for social justice is beyond all praise.” Certainly, his tales of London’s poor folk found a ready echo in New York. But it wasn’t Charles Dickens that she was reading today.