City of Light (8 page)

“Well, the Italians are breeding like rabbits—we can draw from them.”

How did my graduates manage to live with such men? My chastity was much the better fate. At this moment I wouldn’t begrudge a socialist mob storming the club.

What would I do if I weren’t
here
, I asked myself, allowing my mind to drift: Become Annie Oakley, shootin’ ’em up through the Wild West? Or the keeper of a real saloon, in Wyoming or Montana? Become a relief worker at a New York City settlement house? Or a settlement house doctor? Alas the necessary training to become a doctor was so onerous that only very wealthy spinsters could achieve this ambition; I would need a sponsor. Maybe Mr. Urban would be my patron, if I promised to wear a green rose each day in his honor. Or, I could become Nellie Bly, circling the world in seventy-two days to beat Jules Verne’s fictional record and then writing a book about it.

The muted rattle of silverware and the rustle of linen interrupted my thoughts; the waiters had arrived to clear the table and serve the brandy. The men passed around cigars. The room began to fill with the floating blue pall of cigar smoke, which my luncheon companions seemed to find so comforting. Perhaps I should take out a cigarette and begin smoking myself—an act that would horrify these men if it came from a wife or daughter (although I knew that their wives and daughters smoked in secret—secretly from them, that is).

But I would never take out a cigarette. I enjoyed some of the advantages of a man, but I knew only too well the proprieties I needed to observe to maintain my position. The cigarette I would save for the long sojourn I enjoyed at the Twentieth Century Club on the third Friday of every month after my long sojourn here. I was already luxuriating in the expectation of it. The Twentieth Century Club had been founded by Macaulay graduates and was now ensconced in a lovely Italian Renaissance–style building just a few blocks from this bastion of manhood. Each time I approached, simply gazing at the second-floor covered veranda soothed my spirits. When I entered the columned, skylit main court after facing the stresses of masculinity, one of my former young ladies could be counted on to exclaim something along the lines of, “Oh my God, Miss Barrett has come to us
reeking
of cigar smoke! Quick, bring her a drink!”

Yes, my graduates—at least within the confines of their bright and airy clubhouse—were a joy to behold. Widely traveled, they never stopped educating themselves, and yet they wore their learning lightly. They organized reading groups, lectures, philosophical debates; they hired professors from the university to give courses in history and geography. They performed scenes from Shakespeare. When I met my girls at the club, I knew my work had not been in vain.

Just when my thoughts had reached this point of yearning for my own kind, Mr. Rumsey refocused my attention by offering his congratulations, and the others followed suit.

“Yes, yes, Miss Barrett, we are very pleased,” offered John N. Scatcherd, a round-faced, boyish-looking man who controlled a conglomerate centered on lumber, railroads, and banking. “We hope you will be very pleased too.”

Well, this must be some surprise indeed, for them to put on such a show about it. Round and round they went, congratulating me about my good fortune. I did not appreciate it.

“How seldom in this life do any of us have the privilege of bringing a colleague truly extraordinary news.” That fawning remark, delivered with a Georgia-born lilt, came from Dexter Rumsey’s son-in-law, Mr. Ansley Wilcox. At forty-five, Wilcox had the distinction of having married not one but two of Dexter Rumsey’s daughters. Not at the same time, of course. Among other useful endeavors, Wilcox directed the citywide Charity Organization Society, and I hated him, for he had instituted in Buffalo the cruel distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, denying innocent children charity because their parents were inebriate or “immoral.”

If Wilcox was holding forth, the time had come for intervention.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, but—”

“You see, I’ve won, haven’t I!” John D. Larkin broke in, his glee propelling him up from his chair. Mr. Larkin was our mail-order soap millionaire: “Factory to family” was his motto. No one would have dreamed that his lovely soaps had their genesis as the byproducts of the city’s horrific stockyards and packing plants. With his thick but smoothly cut graying hair and beautifully trimmed gray beard, Mr. Larkin shone with cleanliness and ever gave off a pleasant scent. “I knew if we teased her long enough she would begin with ‘Forgive me, gentlemen’! You each owe me five dollars and I expect it promptly,” he declared, slapping his hand on the table before resuming his seat.

The necessity of repressing my anger made me blush. I could only hope that they wouldn’t notice. But naturally Mr. Rumsey did notice.

“Forgive
us
, Miss Barrett,” he said, breaking into the merriment, which he had never joined, and silencing it. “We did not intend to discomfit you. But you see, our news
is
extraordinary.”

“Go ahead and tell her, Rumsey,” said Mr. Albright.

“Hear, hear.”

“Yes. Well.” Mr. Rumsey fingered the red legal folder on the table beside his place setting. A gray satin ribbon held the folder shut. “This week we have received word of a substantial—a more than substantial—donation to the Macaulay School. An endowment which will transform the building and the opportunities within it. This endowment is given entirely in cash, and I have begun investigation into proper investments.”

He paused.

All these men had funded the school generously over the years. More than generously. For them to speak of substance, for them to be impressed, for them to feel such astonishment at a figure that they made a game out of revealing it—well, it made me nervous. I felt the bite of suspicion and doubt.

Mr. Rumsey untied the satin ribbon, then glanced through the papers within the folder. John G. Milburn, the school’s attorney, rose from his place and went to stand behind Mr. Rumsey, helping him to find the appropriate documents.

“These here, Mr. Rumsey,” Milburn said in his cultivated British accent. Born in the north of England, Milburn, at fifty, was a commanding figure—handsome, debonair, and charming. In addition to serving as legal counsel to most of the men in this room, as well as to their various companies, Milburn at the moment was amassing glory as the president of the Pan-American Exposition. Local rumor was that President McKinley had him under consideration for the position of Attorney General, although I would be surprised if he actually received the nomination: McKinley was a Republican, Milburn a Democrat. “You might begin with this one,” he advised.

“Thank you, Milburn.”

Mr. Rumsey read through papers he must surely have read before, but that was typical of him: to proceed slowly. I was lucky to have him as president of the board. He had a scientific and philosophical bent; his support for new and serious courses of study was steadfast. At last, in stentorian tones, he read aloud:

“The Macaulay School is hereby awarded an endowment of one million dollars, the yearly income from which is to be used solely at the discretion of Miss Louisa Barrett, headmistress, with an immediate release of fifty thousand dollars in principal, for work to begin.”

I was stunned.

“This endowment is made in honor of the late Margaret Winspear Sinclair, class of 1886, by her husband, Thomas Sinclair.”

Mr. Rumsey stopped and looked at me, waiting for my response. In the silence I heard only one thing:
Don’t threaten me, Speyer
.

I said nothing. Mr. Rumsey looked slightly surprised, then went on. “In view of this gift, we think it only proper to offer Sinclair a place on the board. An unusual step, I know, given that Sinclair is somewhat—new to the city.”

That word
new
was freighted with implication. Mr. Rumsey turned to Mr. Albright, who, as Tom’s sponsor, might be expected to speak up for him. But Mr. Albright merely gazed at his coffee. He himself was somewhat new to the city, having arrived only in 1883. But his newness was different from Tom’s.

“Nonetheless we deem it appropriate to offer Sinclair a place,” Mr. Rumsey continued. “With your permission, of course, Miss Barrett.” Again he paused. “Miss Barrett?” He leaned forward, eyeing me carefully. “Do you approve?”

Why would Thomas Sinclair give such a gift? Why would he part with so much, when half as much, a quarter as much, would make a profound impact on the school?

“Miss Barrett?” Mr. Rumsey sounded concerned.

I glanced at Albright. How much did he know about this? His face remained impassive.

“Miss Barrett?”

“Yes, yes, of course I approve,” I said angrily.

The men nodded knowingly at one another. They would expect anger. Anger would be considered part of my obstinate character. Well, I
was
angry, because I had no choice in the matter. This was a gift I couldn’t refuse or even question.

And yet, no matter why the money was given—possibly it was simply a memorial to Margaret—it would bring the school improvements I had dreamed about for years. These dreams filled me, smothering questions of why and wherefore, and my dreams became words: “The things we will do … a chemistry laboratory, a theater, a new art studio, scholarships—”

“Not too many scholarships, Miss Barrett,” someone said at the other end of the table. I ignored his identity and the affable laughter which greeted his remark.

“A swimming pool, a running track, a new gymnasium designed for basketball—my girls love basketball.”

I realized I was blushing badly now. The gentlemen around me were smiling—with kindness. They weren’t smug, they weren’t complacent; they were my friends, my supporters. They’d always shown me sympathy. Anything I’d wanted, they’d given me. Ten years ago, I’d asked them for a sabbatical leave—to visit Europe, I told them—and they’d agreed without demur and given me a grant to cover expenses. When I returned, the position of headmistress awaited me. I was the orphaned, nearly penniless daughter of a college professor, but they accepted me as an equal among them. They gave me a place at their table. They championed the cause of women’s education. They even allowed Millicent Talbert to attend the school. And I had repaid their trust.

Yes, they were generous, sensitive, and kind. They embraced the future. They were among the beneficent lords of the nation, the most wonderful men I had ever met. Each was a father to me. The father I had lost.

I covered my face, unable to hold back my tears.

“Well, gentlemen, here’s something we shall have to keep among ourselves,” Mr. Rumsey said gently. “Old Tom Sinclair has made our Miss Barrett cry.”

CHAPTER V

T
he generators gleamed black in the sunlight that poured through the long, arched windows of Thomas Sinclair’s cathedral of power. One week after I’d learned about the endowment, I stood with my eighteen senior girls and our guide on the wrought-iron observation bridge that spanned Powerhouse 1. The ten generators—alternators, to be precise, our guide explained—were aligned in a row beneath us. They were mammoth, their outer edges spinning so fast as to be invisible. With their unceasing whir, they might have been alive. When I first saw them, I caught my breath—we all did, gasping as we edged single file onto the bridge. Men walked among these leviathans. Men stood at the switchboards, checked the gauges, adjusted the levers, calmly controlling and directing the machines that rose around them. Bands of color from the stained-glass transoms colored the men’s faces blue and red.

The powerhouse was pristine and glowing, its white enameled brick walls polished clean. There was no hint of factory grit. The hum of the generators filled the room like a drape of velvet, soft and pliant. The windows were so wide and tall as to create the illusion of no walls at all. High at the far end of the room, like a rose window in a church, was a stained-glass rendering of the symbol of the power project: the American and Horseshoe Falls surrounded by forest, as in the days of the Indians, and shot through with a lightning bolt.

Tom was right, there was a sacredness here, a deep urging toward awe that the builders of Chartres and Bourges must have felt. A person could worship here, turning himself over to a greater power; finding comfort and fortitude in its strength. Architect Stanford White had fulfilled Tom’s conception, sparing no expense to create a masterpiece.

Outside, the Niagara River passed, dense and purposeful, its ice floes a shock of white against the water’s brilliant green. Because of its roiling, the river contained so much oxygen that its color seemed uncanny. The Falls were only a mile away. The power station had been built right at the edge of the reservation, the land reclaimed from commerce in 1885 to create the first state park in the nation. Outside the river was fierce and turbulent; but here, amid the generators, the power of nature had been subdued by the power of man.

“Yes, young ladies, feast your eyes on the largest hydroelectric alternators on earth! Five thousand horsepower each,” announced Billy O’Flarity, our guide. Upon our arrival this morning, O’Flarity had received us with extravagant deference. We hadn’t yet seen Tom. Indeed, I hadn’t seen Tom since the night Karl Speyer died. Of course I’d written him to express my thanks for his endowment. He had responded with this invitation to visit the power station.

Despite my better instincts, I had continued to read the often extravagant speculations in the yellow press about Speyer’s death. If the coroner’s report turned out to contain only what Mr. Rumsey thought it should, I rationalized, I needed to have my own information. Unionists, nature lovers, professional rivals, thieves: The newspapers considered these the most likely culprits in Speyer’s death. Mercifully, no reports, thus far at least, had implicated the leaders of the power project. Therefore I still felt secure withholding from the police my knowledge of Tom’s argument at home with Speyer and his lie about it later. I could still cling to the hope that my suppositions were wrong; I prayed so. Yet the matter gnawed at me, my fears made worse by a creeping suspicion that Tom was in fact using the endowment to bribe me into silence … otherwise, why would he have presented it that way, suddenly and without warning?

“Yes, you’re lookin’ at ten percent of the electric power generated in the United States of America—and it can go anywhere we decide to send it,” O’Flarity was saying in his Irish brogue. He smiled benignly upon us. His wavy hair was white around his face but progressed through various shades into a pure carrot color that curled over his collar. His white eyebrows were thick and brushed upward, waxed into position, I wagered, because I’d never seen such gravity-defying eyebrows. The blue of his eyes faded into white. Although his clothes were not flamboyant, he wore them flamboyantly—two vests of contrasting plaids, both frayed, a silken ascot, and a white shirt with billowing sleeves. He was like an impoverished showman, a carnival barker like so many in the town of Niagara Falls, with its fire eaters, stuntmen, and museums of horror. The only difference was that Billy O’Flarity wasn’t showing off America’s Fattest Lady or the World’s Tallest Man, but a symbol of the future come to life.

“Right here, right before your very eyes, you are witnessing the transformation of the world, from the age of steam to the age of electricity!” Extravagant phrases, but true nonetheless.

“Over there’s the switchboard platform—made from nothing less than the finest Italian marble. See how smooth it’s been polished? Notice too the polished faces of our handsome switchboard operators!” A few of the girls giggled, but more blushed, and O’Flarity beamed with pleasure. “Yes, indeed, you’ve got every single thing you need to operate the generators right on that platform: your bus bars, your rheostats, your handsome young men. Any questions?” He raised his eyebrows in appeal. “No? Well, young ladies, I’m not surprised. Overwhelming, it is, to see for the first time these miracles of human ingenuity. Let us leave this temple of power to the edification of the next group of visitors, and I’ll show you how it all works.”

With a well-rehearsed dramatic flourish—throwing an imaginary scarf around his neck—he turned on his heel and led us back the way we’d come, down a narrow flight of stairs and through a vaulted passageway. He walked with a swaggering limp that might have been fabricated solely to add to his style. I herded the girls before me, taking my place at the end of the line to make sure no one wandered off. Thus I saw the girls as a group, dressed virtually alike in long dark silk skirts and high-necked Holland shirtwaists, hair twisted up at the back of their heads. Alas, a timeworn image came into my mind, making me sentimental just when I wanted to be stern: the memory of these girls only a few years ago, their skirts at their calves instead of the floor, their hair bouncing freely behind them, big bows propped on the tops of their heads. Now they were grown, almost ready for college or coming-out parties or both. In most ways, they were out of my control. Either I had made them into what I wanted them to be, or the cause was lost.

As we entered the high-ceilinged presentation room, O’Flarity took a pointer from the bin near the door. Diagrams and maps covered the walls, and there were working models of machinery, some with water gushing through them. Groups of tourists, including a party of Japanese gentlemen, vied for space. The power station had become as much a tourist destination as the Falls. Considering the expense that must have gone into this presentation room, Tom and his partners were obviously eager to show off what they had created.

“Now, ladies, gather round, gather round,” O’Flarity said, his words echoing with other words in other languages against the marble floor and tiled walls. He drew us together around a scale model of the Niagara River region from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

“Now for a bit of background. The men who built this power station—the greatest men in our great nation—paid for it out of their own pockets. Without any public offerings. Without any help from the federal government—that’s right, zero was the amount of money that came from Washington. Their names are Morgan, Vanderbilt, Belmont, Biddle, Rothschild, and Astor—not to mention many from right here on the Niagara Frontier. They put up millions of dollars with no guarantee of return. And why did they do it, I ask you?”

“To turn a profit?” Maddie Fronczyk asked.

I stifled a laugh. Maddie was softly round, her blonde hair braided around her head. Her family was Catholic, from Silesia, a region on the Polish, German, and Czech borders. I feared some of the girls teased her about looking as if she were in Silesia still, but Maddie took everything in stride. She attended Macaulay on a scholarship that Margaret had established years ago for the daughters of industrial laborers. Her father had worked here at the power station before his death. Perhaps because of her background, she seemed older than her years, certainly older than the other seniors around her.

“It’s an excellent example of the function of the profit motive in a capitalist society,” she continued.

What
had she been reading in her free time? The element of ironic humor in her words was lost on her peers, but I enjoyed it immensely.

O’Flarity, however, was indignant. “You are wrong, young lady! The men who paid for this power station did it for the good of mankind—to run our industries, to light the darkness. They saw a need and they filled it. They are heroes!
They
took the risk,
they
had the courage—they transformed the world!” He tapped his pointer against the floor.

Maddie smiled as if forgiving a child for misbehaving, but the other girls looked impressed. I didn’t interfere. I made it a policy to stay in the background when I took the girls on field trips. People didn’t expect enough from these girls, and it was my job to expect more. To make them expect more from themselves. My primary duty here was to protect their virtue.

O’Flarity glared at each of us, as if awaiting further challenges, before continuing. “Now I’m sure you’re all wondering why Niagara is the most perfect site in the world for a hydroelectric power station,” he said, like an accusation. “I’ll tell you. First, the Niagara River is not a river. It’s a strait, linking two bodies of fresh water, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Because it’s a strait, we have a continuous, steady, even flow. This is extremely unusual, and I hope you’ll never forget it. The Great Lakes are a huge reservoir behind us”—he thrust out his arm expansively—“where water exists for nothing but to go over the Falls. And we’ve got a second advantage here at Niagara, which is that we aren’t off somewhere in the woods. We’re at the absolute center of the best commercial routes in the country, adjacent to the major metropolis of Buffalo.”

Now he cleared his throat and spoke with a certain reverence, gaining from the girls an even closer degree of attention. “The farsighted heroes who built this project”—he glowered at Maddie—“realized they would need to send the electricity away from the Falls to make it truly beneficial. Therefore they opted to utilize alternating current. Over the objections even of the great Thomas Edison, they chose alternating current: That’s how brave they were. These details are important, dearies, so you must bear with me, you must stretch your minds.”

Only Maddie flinched at his deprecation; the others may not have recognized it.

“Nowadays we accept alternating current as the most natural thing in the world, but even a decade ago it was radical! Thomas Edison—now, he’s done a lot of good in the world, don’t get me wrong—but he devoted himself to direct current, clung to it, no matter what evidence anybody gave him to the contrary. That was
his
profit motive talking. Direct current was his baby. But the problem was, direct current has to be used within a couple of miles of where it’s generated; it’s got a low voltage, it can’t just be sent anywhere. Luckily the farsighted George Westinghouse believed in
alternating
current, which can go places. This is what brought on the so-called Battle of the Currents, which some of you may have heard of.”

I, at least, recalled the bitter Battle of the Currents: Thomas Edison electrocuting stray dogs in front of reporters to try to prove that high-voltage alternating current was dangerous to bring into homes. But Edison did not mention that high-voltage alternating current was never brought into homes; the voltage was always stepped down by transformers before it was used. In addition, scientists like Edison always talked in terms of home use when virtually no homes used electricity; factories, industries, streetcars, yes. But homes weren’t wired (except for those of men like Thomas Sinclair), and I’d never heard anybody even discuss the mass wiring of homes.

“So what exactly is alternating current?” O’Flarity pondered aloud. “I’ll tell you. It was invented by the greatest genius of all time, Mr. Nikola Tesla. I myself have seen Mr. Tesla, right here at the power station, during one of his visits. I’ll never forget it. He’s a gigantic man—in mind and body; I’ll wager he’s over six and a half feet tall, and thin as can be; he’s all brain! Now, as to this alternating current: Mr. Tesla saw it one day in a flash of genius while he was walking in a park in Budapest—that’s the general part of the world he’s from, in case you’re wondering what he was doing in such a place. Alternating current is what we call a polyphase system. It keeps reversing its direction. Forward and back, forward and back. It’s created with a rotating magnetic field. The way it works is …” As he spoke on, in increasing complexity—and I was impressed by his knowledge—the girls’ eyes glazed over. After a few moments O’Flarity realized he’d lost his audience and tapped his pointer hard on the floor, startling them.

“Ladies! Rouse yourselves for this bit of insight: Our electricity can go anywhere in the state, anywhere in the nation! It can be put onto what we call a grid: flick a lever right here at Niagara, and someday you’ll be lighting up Albany or Cleveland or Chicago or Ma and Pa’s farm out in the boonies somewhere. And it’s cheap. Cheap and plentiful!” He eyed the girls with mock lasciviousness. “Which no one would ever say about
you
, my dear young ladies!”