A GILDED

Death

CECELIA TICHI

A Gilded Death

Copyright © 2021 by Cecelia Tichi

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

ISBN 978-1-63972-518-2

Chapter One

Newport, 1898

THE AIR WAS SHARP, and I drew my cloak tighter around my shoulders and peered down at the Newport harbor. The jutting crags and rocks framed the waters below, where two clumsy ferries rounded the breakwater at the lighthouse and mixed with the sailboats and yachts. Narragansett Bay glittered in the distance, and farther still, the ocean. I could see the naval station on Goat Island and the walls of old Fort Adams, gray as a prison. I was not here to sight see. I had agreed to meet my friend Cassie at the edge of this granite cliff—so far, no sign of her. The weather was clear, but a bad feeling hung in the air.

Cassie was overdue. Her footman came to me this morning, breathless, with a note begging me to meet her here at this remote spot at three p.m. this afternoon. Urgent—About Auntie’s death, she wrote. My friend’s cursive was crabbed and splotched, her note dashed off in haste. This summer Newport season depressed her, for the sudden death of her great-aunt last winter had plunged Cassie into mourning in leaden grays of body and mind.

Would I meet her? I instantly replied: YES. It was now half-past three, and no sign of her. I glanced sideways at the gravel roadway. Still no carriage.

See the burgee, ma’am? See it? My driver, Noland, tried to be helpful. "That’s Mr. J. P. Morgan’s Corsair in the harbor, the ‘greyhound of the sea,’ near as fast as the Cunard liners. The red burgee with the crescent and cross."

The burgee? It was a flag, yes?—and for me, another word to translate, like regatta, which meant a race. This was my third summer in Newport, and still it felt like another country. In my mind, open water meant lakes or rivers, and boats for prospectors on the Humboldt or Colorado Rivers. I understood canyons, arroyos, sagebrush and plunging rocky rapids. The cloud-white sails were still novel—even foreign.

A gust blew, and I tugged the lightweight wool cloak that Cassie had insisted I buy because the Newport air could be chilly and a fashionable cloak would help quiet gossip about me as Society’s Wild West Annie Oakley who had snagged a New York gentleman. In this so-called Gilded Age, a snob named Ward McAllister insisted that Newport was the place…to take root in. The social taproot was my husband, whose family had summered here for years. To me, summer was a season, not a verb, which said a good deal about my place in the Newport root system.

Ma’am, if you please, step back. You’re a bit close…. The rocks can loosen, and there’s no surviving a fall here.

Oh…. Thank you, Noland. I retreated. Was it proper to say that heights both frightened and called me close, like the Colorado Rockies of my childhood? Was it a breach of etiquette to confide such thoughts to my coachman?

Cassie was never uncertain about matters of etiquette. She did not dramatize in person or in writing. What was so urgent about her late Auntie that we must meet on this granite outcropping? Cassie—Cassandra Van Schylar Fox Forster (Mrs. Dudley F.)—would not summon me here on a whim. Why wasn’t she here? She and I were to be guests at a formal dinner this evening, though any chance at a one-to-one confab in that scene would face long odds.

I was worried. A sudden, sharp gust of wind blew in, colder than before, and Noland said, A front’s coming in, ma’am. We don’t get them often, but best get out of this weather.

My little Cartier watch said four p.m., and I drew my cloak tight and stepped toward the carriage. Noland held the reins, and I stroked the mare’s neck, but her warmth gave no comfort.

Home, Noland, if you please.

Theo Bulkeley was often pressed into service as my escort when my husband Roddy—Roderick Windham DeVere—was out of town to defend a bartender from the temperance crowd or in demand to help blend a new cocktail for a café soon to open. Mark Twain, a western kindred spirit, had dubbed these years a Gilded Age, but my husband Roddy preferred The Golden Age of Cocktails. My husband’s law school training and bon vivant hobby had made him a sought-after figure in courtrooms and barrooms, which we joked about when a telegram or telephone call beckoned him to the city.

Is the Anti-Saloon League trying to shut down another bar? I would ask. Or does a new hotel need advice about their martini?

Roddy would flash his handsome smile but keep me guessing. The courtroom dramas were on the public record, but my husband was often sworn to secrecy when called to consult on the cocktails that could make or break the reputation of a private club, a hotel bar, a resort, or a railroad club car. Our Newport cottage and New York household stocked countless bottles that Roddy called libation foundations. Tipsy? We were not, but we had our fun.

Roddy insisted that I attend tonight’s dinner this evening while he toiled in the July heat of New York City. Our friend, Theo Bulkeley called for me punctually in his brougham.

Tall and slender with pale blue eyes and narrow shoulders, the confirmed bachelor had been adopted into New York Society due to his impeccable Boston Brahmin ancestry, dating back to the Puritans. He and I were compatriots, though Theo was welcome, whereas my western upbringing in mining camps made me something of an exotic species to Society.

Theo’s wit was often savage, and I relished it—most of the time. His membership in a half-dozen gentlemen’s clubs in the city let him glean all sorts of useful hearsay. Tonight, however, from the moment of our arrival I wished the evening to end so I could hear Cassie’s troubles. Just as I had feared, we swam too far apart in the general flurry of greetings and introductions at this great oceanfront palazzo of a cottage, Owls Roost, to have a private word. About this afternoon, Cassie managed to murmur only a quick so sorry… and add dreadful news…terrifying, before we were forced to retreat into the general stream.

Our hosts, the shipping mogul Mr. Edwin D. Glendorick and his wife, Madeline, met us at the entrance hall, with its gold coffered ceiling and walls of floral silk appliqué. The gentlemen’s hats and walking sticks were handed off to the valet and footmen, while maids touched up ladies’ hair in an anteroom. We greeted one another as we stepped onto the oriental rugs in the Louis XV ballroom. Over the immense black marble fireplace loomed a tableau of cupids, cherubs, and a nest of owls, all executed by a famous Florentine sculptor—our host’s point of pride. The oil portraits appeared to be ancestral, each one new and shiny.

I recognized most of the guests, Edith and Teddy Wharton, the Alderbachs, the Kents, Florence and Albert Dovedale. And there was silver-haired Archibald Romberg, a widower known as the Beau Brummel who pursued widows and certain single ladies. Here, too, were Colonel and Mrs. Twist, and many others, including Cassie’s young uncle-by-marriage, the charming Sam Brush with his new bride.

We socialized while admiring—and assessing—the finery. The gentlemen were uniformed in white tie and swallowtail coats, but we ladies were to praise one another’s gowns of brocade and chiffon, peau de soie, and lace and feather trimming. In the dusky evening summer light, Cassie Forster’s ivory complexion glowed in a powder blue satin gown with its azure velvet neckline, although anyone who knew her well could see she was troubled. I too wore satin, mine a deep green. I hoped fervently to be united with my friend and, as good luck had it, we were seated across from one another.

At such gatherings, I looked to Cassie for cues about the gleaming array of sterling implements before me. By now, I recognized the bouillon spoon and knew not to sip the warm water with the lemon slice—a fingerbowl, not a soup. Our champagne was poured by a fleet of footmen in frogged tailcoats. Cassie had raised her glass. I took my first sip.

Ah, chilled perfectly, said Colonel Twist who was seated to my left. Hire an English butler, and your beverages will be at the proper temperature every time.

Cassie had suggested that I read the men’s whiskers for my cues, and the colonel’s remarkable muttonchops said vanity. I lowered my eyes and murmured, So very true, Colonel. And my husband would agree…especially when a champagne cocktail calls for a sugar cube and a dash of Angostura bitters.

I thought the man might choke. His eyes widened, and patches of his cheeks turned red at my impish remark. We ladies were permitted endless wine, punch, and liqueurs, but cocktails? Never! The campaign for votes for women did not include votes for cocktails. This state of affairs must not continue. The Men’s Café at the Waldorf Hotel begged to be challenged by thirsty ladies calling out, cocktails!, to demand action with a shaker and swizzle stick. In due course, I intend to lead the charge.

Colonel Twist had twisted to the left, freeing us both, and I gazed across the table. Cassie and I had a system of codes. Her arched brow was a signal shot across the damask tablecloth and bone china plates with our host’s newly minted coat-of-arms, a tiny owl on a Viking ship to remind us that Edwin Glendorick’s fortune had been amassed from shipping. Every lady at the table glittered with diamonds. Our hostess had added a tiara in tribute the guest of honor, a pale stripling of a bachelor who was introduced as a Baronet and the Sixth Earl of Cleave—or was it the Seventh?—who had pronounced himself delighted with his summer in Newport, from the croquet matches to the yachting parties.

The Earl’s betrothal to the Glendoricks’ daughter Emily was doubtless in negotiation, for all Newport knew that seventeen-year-old Emily Glendorick was soon to become one more of America’s Dollar Princesses, destined to enter the British aristocratic House of Cleave upon her marriage to the impecunious Baronet. The Glendorick money would shore up the Baronet’s family, while Emily, transformed into Lady Emily, would fulfill her parents’ hearts’ desire.

We had finished a wobbly tomato aspic and consommé, when another squad of footmen marched upon us, each gloved hand holding a gold-rimmed plate. Cassie’s manicured index finger moved like a pointer for the implement with the little curve at the tip, my cue.

Of course, the fish knife.

I gripped the utensil meant for the flounder blanketed in cheese sauce, a sad substitute for the trout we caught in icy waters when I was a girl in the West. All that was before papa struck the Big Lode and I was sentenced to become a lady.

I met Cassie’s gaze and winked my thanks to this best friend who looked out for me—just as I stood ready to help her. Growing up in mining camps with Papa, I had no playmates, and when we moved at last to Virginia City where I went to school, the girls’ cliques barely tolerated the newcomer from the Rockies. This friendship with Cassie meant so much…. I hoped she felt comforted by my pre-dinner promise not to depart without the tête-à-tête about her late aunt.

If only my friend’s scientist husband were here instead of digging fossils on some wind-swept rock in the Pacific Ocean. Or if her mother, Rowena (Rowena Van Schylar Fox) had not just taken a quick flying trip to the city, most likely to consult a lawyer about divorce. Cassie’s father, Robert Fox, had been scandalously caught cuddling a Broadway chorus girl last spring—yet again. Some said Rowena’s chilly temperament had sent her husband into the warm embrace of dancers, a disputable point, but I could swear to the frostiness of Rowena Fox, whose fingers glittered with antique gemstones on every occasion.

Is your friend all right?

All right? From my elbow, Theo’s voice interrupted my thoughts. Cassandra, I mean. Is she well?

Why do you ask, Theo?

It’s just…since her great aunt died.

I paused, a bit guarded. Cassie and her Auntie Georgina had been so very close. He late aunt supported Cassie with praise and encouragement. The two had formed a bond that never gelled between Georgina and her own chronically shy daughter, Sylvia, a spinster whom Cassie described as bony and eccentric.

According to Cassie, cousin Sylvia Brush lived by herself in a shingle cottage in Tuxedo Park in the near mountains of New York. Tuxedo, said Cassie, was fashionable about ten years ago when families bought the cottages and imagined an exclusive American Cotswolds. But Tuxedo had quickly lost favor, though Sylvia settled in, a recluse who became the despair of her sociable mother. Invited to Van Schylar holiday dinners, she wrote her intention to hold the thought but never attended.

Cassie is bearing up, I told Theo. To my eye, she looked fretful and distracted, though others would see an elegant young matron and mother of two young children chatting amiably with the gentlemen to her left and right, both in shirtfronts stiff as boards. On her left, Teddy Wharton doubtless regaled her with tales of his horses or dogs. Mrs. Wharton—Edith—was in view a few seats down, graciously icy as usual, most likely eyeing the furnishings in disdain.

Cassie is as well as one can expect under the circumstances, Theo. See for yourself. She smiles, and Teddy Wharton is charmed. She’s on the mend, coming up for air.

Good to hear your reassuring words, Theo said in the mild voice that signaled something else on his mind. We all understand that Cassandra is not herself this season. He put down his fork. Have I heard something about séances?

I hesitated. The currently popular fad had seduced my friend. Cassie tended toward feelings that her social circle called superstition. Theo prodded, but I quickly changed the subject. Let’s not forget that Cassie and her aunt were very close.

Oh, for certain. Her Auntie Georgina is missed by all. Few have such flair…all those ‘causes’… police raids on gambling dens, statehood for Cuba, kennels for stray dogs. Theo sipped his wine. Georgina ruled the croquet courts, didn’t she? And that exit of hers, what perfect timing. The Broadway theatre couldn’t have produced a more dramatic final curtain.

Between mirth and chagrin, I said nothing. Cassie’s great-aunt’s untimely death had been the shock of last winter, for Georgina Van Schylar Brush had collapsed and died at the social event of the New York season: Mrs. Astor’s annual ball.

The Brush fortune… Theo murmured. He toyed with a spoon. All due to the Log Lifter.

Log what?

The machine that lifts logs onto rail cars. The Brush Log Lifter, Harry’s biggest patent…his magic carpet, so to speak…and Georgina’s by marriage.

The money question hovered, but I speared a green bean and said, Cassandra’s loss is heartbreaking, Theo. Georgina was like her beloved grandmother.

We said no more on that subject, but Fifth Avenue had been consumed by Georgina Brush’s sudden demise. (In perfect health two days before the ball…. Seen sleighing in the Park that afternoon… At the theatre only a week ago.) The newspapers went wild. Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s Journal were bloated with lurid accounts—DEATH STALKS SOCIETY BALL, FATAL MOMENT CAPS LIFE OF WEALTH AND LUXURY… CROQUET COURT ‘WICKED WITCH OF WICKET’ COLLAPSES!!!

For once, the press coverage of Mrs. Astor’s annual Ball had more to report than the extravagant menu and inventories of the ladies’ jewels. The deceased’s lineage from Jon Van Schylar of colonial Knickerbocker New Amsterdam was recounted, as was her marriage before the Civil War to timber mogul Harry D. Brush of Bend, Oregon, and the survival of her daughter, Sylvia Ann Van Schylar Brush of Tuxedo Park, New York.

All Society had speculated on the terms of Georgina Brush’s will, especially the question of what, if anything, was to be left to the reclusive Sylvia, who, to everyone’s astonishment, was the major beneficiary of the Brush timber largesse, the forests, sawmills, lumber yards, railroad cars, and the log lifting device that Theo described.

Georgina’s reason for bestowing such a fortune on her daughter had become the puzzle of the season. Some thought the mother was making amends for raising a recluse. Others believed the money was meant to catapult Sylvia into the causes that had received modest bequests. Time would tell. Meanwhile, Sylvia would be expected to don mourning clothes and stay close to home for a year, which should be second nature to the bereaved recluse even if pondering her lavish inheritance.

Theo put down his spoon. His voice was sly. Would you like a bit of gossip, Valentine? He leaned close. I understand that Miss Sylvia Brush—or a lady who could be her twin—has been observed in the city this month…in the ladies shopping district, unescorted.

Surely, mistaken identity, I said.

And she refreshed herself at Macy’s soda fountain.

Ridiculous, Theo. I knew from Cassie that no lady in Society would be the city by herself in the summer season, much less a daughter in mourning. No one in Society was to be found in the city in the summer except for a quick trip for emergencies. A night or two at the St. Regis or Waldorf, and they were back at the summer places. The rumor was too extravagant.

Whoever was shopping in the Ladies Mile, Theodore Bulkeley, I said, it cannot have been Sylvia Brush.

I rest my case, Mrs. DeVere, Theo retorted. Mrs. Roderick…Windham… DeVere…. He paced each syllable with slight mockery, this descendant of the Puritans.

The name on my calling cards does read, Mrs. Roderick Windham DeVere, as Theo well knew. Born Valentine Louise Mackle on the fourteenth of February in Silverton, Colorado—Val to my the nearest and dearest—I was the only surviving offspring of Kathleen and Patrick Mackle, immigrants from Ireland’s County Donegal, sadly both deceased. In their wildest dreams, old Rufus and Eleanor De Vere never imagined that their beloved only son and heir, Roderick— my Roddy—would fall in love with a western gal or that she would fall madly, head over western bootheels in love with him.

Was it Destiny, as Cassie insisted? Or was Rufus’s addiction to hopeless investment and his son’s interest in spirited beverages the root cause of our offbeat romance and marriage?

Here are the facts. As a New York boy, Roddy had often toured the downtown American Museum that showman P.T. Barnum stocked with wild animals and quirky exhibits. Later on, teenage Roddy found the lower Broadway museum far too dull, while a nearby bar offered intrigue worthy of an alchemist. No longer was whisky simply poured and drunk. A new era of spirits had dawned. The young man watched the barkeeper perform like a Svengali whose mysterious potions delighted patrons as he plied the liquor bottles, sliced fruit, glassware, silver utensils, and crystal-clear ice. Roddy was told that a certain Thomas Alva Edison of bartenders had formerly mixed drinks in this very site and had compiled a book of drinks in endless variety. The author, Professor Jerry Thomas, had tended bar all over the United States and Europe. Bartenders revered him as their Founding Father.

The DeVere family crisis erupted when Roddy’s parents found The Bon- Vivant’s Companion, by Jerry Thomas, in their son’s rooms. Alarmed, they were advised to hasten to the Arizona desert where their son could dry out. Deaf to Roddy’s insistence that he merely sipped and savored, Rufus and Eleanor virtually kidnapped Roddy and fled to a whitewashed adobe hacienda in a village crowded with cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, and swarthy foreigners with picks and shovels.

The hacienda year brought Roddy and me together. Without it, we would never have met. Rufus DeVere became intrigued by the sight of prospectors with their loaded pack mules and read stray copies of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. The gold rush was history, but silver still made fortunes—for a few. My own papa had become a Silver King, thanks to his great timing and hard toil.

Getting rich overnight was still an obsession, but the Lodes were nearing sundown even if mining stocks stayed high.

In any case, the staid, buttoned-down Rufus DeVere got a bad case of silver fever, convinced that the played-out Ophir Mine was due for another strike that could reclaim the DeVeres’ sagging wealth in short order. He hustled his wife and son to the silver mining capital, Virginia City, Nevada, where the V&T Railroad wound up and around a mountain like an anaconda snake. By the time they checked into the Silver Queen Hotel & Saloon on C Street, they were breathless at nearly 6,000 feet above sea level and two flights of steep stairs to their rooms, but also breathless at the prospect of newest wealth.

After our nomadic years in the mining camps, Papa and I were now full- time residents of this improbable city, clapped against Mount Davidson in Nevada’s Washoe Mountains. The weather was mostly awful, summers hot and dry, winters a mix of bone-chilling snow and rain and dust, plus roaring gale winds we call the Washoe Zephyr. Papa had built the two of us a Queen Anne style house on B Street with a decorative wraparound porch and gas lighting and running water and a coal-burning stove. After canvas tents and one-room mountain cabins, after winter nights shivering in itchy red wool Union suits, I thought Virginia City was heaven.

Roddy and I met in the Silver Queen Hotel dining room, where Papa and I often dined, when the DeVeres came for their evening meal. Conversation drifted from their table to ours. Papa swore to Rufus that the Ophir and all