Afternoons with Emily Read online

  When we packed my trunk, it was almost empty; all my chitons and supper dresses were too small now. Lettie would use them for her niece Granada, who was the size I used to be.

  “You’re just like a little snake, Miranda! You’ve outgrown your old Barbados skin,” Miss Adelaide told me. So we went to Bridgetown together and found me a dark traveling dress. It felt hard and strange; I had not worn sleeves and petticoats and buttons for a year.

  Sad Lettie helped me wrap my shell collection and its precious cabinet. Dr. Hugh gave me his very best shell book — the French one with tissue paper over each delicate engraving.

  “You can study these to know what to look for when you come back to York Stairs,” he told me. “I don’t want you to lose that sharp sheller’s eye!”

  When we sailed the first day of June, it was a festival. There were all our neighbor friends from the Shakespeare evenings, with books and little gifts for traveling. There was a wagonful of excited people from York Stairs with flowers and cakes, calling and waving.

  “A lot of folks seem to like you,” Captain Childrey remarked. Poseidon did too: we glided north with our own private trade wind. I was never seasick, not for an hour. I read on deck and watched for whales and remembered York Stairs. The smiling dolphins rode our bow wave. Day by day, the sea changed from beloved Barbados ultramarine to New England slate blue, where the last dolphins left us.

  Book III

  AMHERST

  1857

  I was dizzy from changes. Every day was a jack-in-the-box; new places and new people came leaping up at me. In a month, I had gone from Barbados to Boston to Springfield, poised between the past of Mount Vernon Street and the future in Amherst.

  In Boston, we stayed in a very grand hotel with chandeliers as tall and glittering as ocean waves. Here Cousin Ellen Curtis met us — now Cousin Ellen Curtis Lyall, a lovely laughing bride. She always seemed to me the gayest of the Lathams. Mr. Harnett, who met her once, said she had joie de vivre.

  She and I went shopping for wonderful dresses in styles and colors I never would have chosen. She said everything I wore must suit my eyes, my best feature, so dark green and brown were wrong; gray, azure, dark blue, and violet were right. As Cousin Daisy was still abroad, Cousin Ellen had picked up her mantle and was now the only Latham relative who seemed to truly like my short curls. I wondered what they would have thought of my radical Greek chitons. Though I tried, it was hard to warm to those relations whose tastes and inclinations were so conventional.

  We went from Boston to Springfield on a train, which was loud and dirty and thrilling. (One called this “taking the cars.”) There the Sloans, my aunt Helen and my cousin Kate, met us. Aunt Helen was as kind as I remembered. She radiated good sense and goodwill; there was no malice in her. I felt she and Miss Adelaide were kindred spirits.

  And Kate Chase Sloan — however did I manage so long without her? She was three years older than I; she was calm and gentle and witty. She either didn’t know or didn’t care that she was a beauty-in-waiting, but I could hardly look away from her. Kate was slender, long-boned, and graceful, with pale olive skin that flushed apricot over her cheekbones. Her face was shaped like a valentine heart. Her hair was cloudy and dark, pulled back with a ribbon. Her eyes were hazel, green and gold like an iridescent hummingbird — but none of her beauty mattered compared to her generosity, her concern for others.

  She had such a soft voice that I had to lean in to hear her — but whatever she was saying, it was sure to be wise and funny. I felt as if I had known her and loved her always. Like me, Kate was happiest with a book. She had not been able to do as much reading as I had, though, because she sang — oh, how she sang! When my father heard her on our first evening in Springfield, he was beyond social compliments. He became deeply serious.

  “Why, Helen, I had no idea. You’re really going to have to think about this, aren’t you? We’ll have to make some plans, I think.”

  So Kate’s voice, as much as anything, led to combining our families and households in Amherst. Aunt Helen would rent her Springfield house and run Father’s Amherst home for him. Kate would attend Amherst Academy with me and take voice lessons at the college. I would have the use of a mother and a sister, and Father, the paterfamilias-come-lately, was going to happily pay the bills for us all. Each one of us was delighted with Father’s decisions and with the shape of our new family.

  Once this was settled, Father moved to the village inn, and began his house hunt. There was not much selection in a town of less than three thousand, but he was fortunate to find a small house on Amity Street that could be extended into the Greek Revival design of his dreams.

  We took the cars back and forth between Springfield and Amherst. Springfield was a small manufacturing city, and Amherst was a village in the woods. The two towns, and a dozen others, had grown up along the banks of the great, slow Connecticut River. This valley was like a medieval tapestry of woods and farms and settlements, with interlocking roads and now railways. It was a self-contained little kingdom, river-centered, hill-enclosed — very beautiful, and entirely unlike Boston.

  When September came, we moved from Springfield to Amherst. We rented a German professor’s house while the additions were being made to our own. Our temporary home was crowded and dark, with three or four sets of curtains at each window and heavy bowlegged furniture. So different from light and airy York Stairs! There were huge, aggressive ferns in every corner, so we called our house the “plush jungle.” We found few books, but we were given permission to use the college library.

  As I walked about, I liked the tidy look of Amherst Village. There was a central block of brick stores and offices with brick sidewalks; this was called “downtown.” A hardware store, a dry goods’, a printer, and a post office were all on the main street. The doctors’ and lawyers’ offices were over them, on the second story. There was a fine bookstore, which the college required; Father said I might choose and send a book for Miss Adelaide every month. For she wrote to me:

  I will always think of you as my daughter. No mother could miss her child more than I do you — or hold more tender hopes for the years ahead. I want you to tell me all your days, your triumphs and disappointments. Everything about your life is my dear concern. Your words will reach me in less than a fortnight!

  There were two large, handsome brick residences that dominated the town. President Stearns of the college lived in one; the other belonged to the Dickinsons, the leading family of Amherst. The Dickinsons were founders of the college, builders of the community. Their rooflines and chimneys rose above the trees; all the other houses were smaller or built lower. Looking down from the nearby Pelham Hills, I found that the village itself was almost invisible. The forest appeared undisturbed.

  I liked to walk along the village streets, looking into autumn gardens, imagining the lives of the families. I thought I could fit into a society on this scale. Already some people greeted me, and a few girls my age smiled shyly — suggesting that my oddities did not stand out yet.

  Nevertheless, the night before the academy opened, I was full of apprehension and stage fright. I dreaded the crowds of strangers, already friends with one another. I feared my own mistakes and ignorance. I had no idea what to say and do tomorrow morning. I confessed all this to Kate; I even managed to make a funny story about my terrors. Kate laughed till she was weak.

  “Stop, Miranda, stop! It won’t be as bad as you think,” she reassured me kindly. “You needn’t worry about the boys, they’re always nice to new pretty girls. Just smile and pretend they’re smarter than you are.”

  I stared at her in amazement. I was going to be one of the pretty girls? Even stranger — I was expected to pretend to be less than I was. What a curious society to navigate. My nervousness escalated.

  Kate hugged me, smiling. “It will all be fine. The other thing to remember is that the girls will like you if you don’t chase the boys.”

  Following that advice would be easy!


  That night, the first frost took vivid scarlet bites out of the tawny maples. On my fourteenth birthday, we walked to school under the brilliant trees. We went along the green and up the hill to the academy, a plain building of painted brick. Its three stories were starkly unadorned, stating that education within was serious and spiritual. “All frivolity abandon, ye who enter here!” I whispered to Kate, who laughed.

  Entering, I was caught up in a swirl of noise and energy, and swept along in a stream of excited children pressing forward. Far from avoiding or criticizing me, none of the other students paid me the slightest notice. I was not conspicuous, not different; I was blessedly one of the crowd.

  Somehow I found myself in the right rooms, with teachers who expected me and handed me books. Labels and names and directions poured over me, my ears rang, my eyes were dazzled — but all I received was the same hurried kindness as everyone else. I had expected so much worse on my first day. So far no one had guessed that I was a creature out of my element.

  One of my teachers was Miss Lowe, a grave young woman with dark eyes and a level gaze. When recess came, she asked me to stay. I was relieved; I had not wanted to attempt jumping rope with my skillful classmates. I intended to ask Kate to teach me how when we got home.

  “Miranda, tell me about the list of books you read this summer.” She held the handwritten list I turned in this morning, as was asked of each pupil. She seemed worried. “Did you read all these with understanding?”

  “Yes, Miss Lowe, I did.” I wondered what it was about my list that concerned her.

  “I see. Tell me, which was your favorite?”

  “It was a tie — either Emma or Henry Esmond.” I thought a moment. “Definitely Emma. Jane Austen captures her characters so vividly, don’t you think?”

  Miss Lowe gazed at me appraisingly. “Yes, I do. How would you feel about being with an older class for literature?”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all, if they didn’t.”

  “We often mix up ages; it makes for a more interesting discussion. Now tell me — do you like Longfellow?”

  “I loved ‘The Skeleton in Armor.’ I even memorized it! But I think ‘Hiawatha’ was — well, childish.” I hoped I hadn’t spoken too freely. I looked at Miss Lowe for her response.

  Miss Lowe smiled for the first time. “That will be our secret, between the two of us. And here’s another: I don’t like Sir Walter Scott!”

  We grinned at each other. I knew Miss Lowe and I would have many book conversations in the future.

  “That wasn’t bad at all,” I told Kate as we walked home with our armfuls of new books. “Miss Lowe is a little like Mr. Harnett.”

  “That is the best school I ever attended,” Kate affirmed. “I can tell already.”

  “What good news from everyone!” Father beamed at dinner. “Nobody bit Miranda, and nobody eloped with Kate!” We all laughed, and I marveled at the change that had come over Father. He was more outgoing and open, even engaging in frivolities and jokes. And he and Aunt Helen were as happy as Kate and I about the school situation.

  “Your academy was started by the same gang of Unitarian churchgoers who founded the college some years later,” Father informed us. “The two institutions are still very close and still hell-bent on saving souls. We won’t tell anyone how corrupt and worldly you girls really are!”

  I was delighted by Father’s banter and our inauguration as a family. In Barbados, as much as I loved it, I was a welcome guest; here I felt completely at home.

  The Pelham Hills blazed beside the river; we walked under the maple torches and oak beacons that were all along the village streets. Fires of leaves raked up into stubby pyramids smoldered along the lanes; violet smoke rose in twisted columns. Amherst in autumn was a stunning surprise of clear blue weather — but the colors deepened as the nights chilled, and the wind had a steel edge.

  Kate and I were beginning to feel quite at ease at the academy. Half the girls in her class were only going through the motions of study until they could close their books for good and move into their prescribed roles as wives. Meanwhile the awkward boys, pimpled and bony and honking like geese, were handy to practice on until appropriate suitors came along.

  The other girls were the scholars, the readers; they moved deep in projects, laden with books, eager for learning. Kate fit effortlessly among them. Because Kate literally did not see boys, the girls forgave her her hair, her complexion, her striking beauty.

  I turned out to be a little hard to place in the academy, since I was ahead of my age in some subjects and behind in others. The teachers were all kind and uncritical; after a week of switching me about, they devised a patchwork schedule. I was with the fifteen-year-olds for history and literature, and (oh, shame!) with the ten-year-olds in mathematics. I had botany, geography, and French with my own age. I considered taking recorder lessons as some of the girls did.

  Gradually I learned protective coloration, as if I were a small animal in the woods. I could skip rope at recess; it was simpler than it looked that first day. I learned jacks, which was a friendly and flexible game played in silence. I practiced jacks at home on our porch. I did not have real friends yet, but no one snubbed me.

  In class, I tried not to raise my hand. If I was called on, I learned that no one minded my knowing the answer — if I produced it uncertainly. I never mentioned books except those that had been assigned. (Jane Eyre, forgive me!) I discovered that Barbados, so remote and exotic, made a fine excuse for my social naïveté — so I enlarged my time there and put my years in Boston far in the past.

  All this fitting in was very tiring — but I had Kate every evening to hear my trials, to listen and laugh and encourage me. She accepted me as I was; I had nothing to conceal — and I was never lonely. One night I even told Kate that I thought Lolly Wheeler, the social center of the fourteen-year-old set, was starting to like me.

  Every afternoon after school, Kate and I walked up Amity Street to watch the day’s progress on our new house. There was to be a two-story wing to the west for Father, with a study downstairs and two bedrooms over it. One day, we met my father and Ethan Howland, our handsome young architect, frowning and pacing up and down the site. Ethan Howland came from Springfield for half the week to supervise the additions to our house. The work was going rapidly, but the large one-story addition behind the main house — my father called it the “temple” — had met trouble: immovable bedrock.

  Mr. Howland and Father had been most congenial until this business of the rock, which loomed in the space where we had intended to build our large drawing room.

  “Jos, you have to give in on something,” Mr. Howland was pleading. “Follow the Parthenon ratio, but make the whole room smaller. We can build right up to the rock. That’s thirty feet.”

  “I won’t have it!” Father’s rejection was explosive. “I won’t have a skimpy temple that looks as if it had shrunk in the wash!”

  “Then we’ll have to build over the rock,” said Mr. Howland. “You’ll just have to lower the ceiling.”

  “Never!” Father glared and blew like a whale. It was a shame to see him so upset, when until now the progress on the house had given him so much pleasure.

  I wandered off to study the rock, now our acknowledged enemy. There was no way to guess how deep it went, since what was visible was no more than the horn of a huge hidden mass. I returned to the building for a yardstick and measured the projection. Somewhere in my mind there was an idea moving and taking shape, as a deep-water dolphin glimmers its way up to visibility. I rejoined the men, who were still arguing.

  “Father, I believe there is a way.” I was very calm and confident, just as I was for my first geography test last week. I knew the answer; I only had to produce it. Both men stared at me.

  “Do you remember our Shakespeare evenings in Barbados? And how we said we’d do them ourselves in Amherst?”

  “Of course I remember. That’s one of the reasons we must have a big room. You can’t do Sh
akespeare in a stingy ten-by-ten parlor.”

  I saw Mr. Howland swallow a smile. Our parlor was actually a generous twenty-two by twenty.

  “Well, couldn’t we use a stage for our readings? The rock is twelve feet wide and only two feet high. So we could just build over the rock — and then drop down for the rest of the room. That way you could keep your temple measurements, and we’d have a stage too. What do you think?”

  There was a long silence while Mr. Howland scribbled and smiled and waited for Father to speak.

  “Miranda, what did Alexander cut?” Father said at last.

  “The Gordian knot!” I laughed with delight at having been helpful. “And he got Asia in return!”

  “Well, Alexandra, you’ve just cut our knot — but I’ll give you a stage instead of Asia. Ethan, why didn’t we think of that by ourselves? By God, we’re going to build Kate a hall for her first concert!”

  We all congratulated ourselves and one another, glowing like the brilliant leaves falling around us. I pointed at them, naming them for the colors of autumn from my paint box.

  “Scarlet lake, vermilion, rose madder,” I called.

  “And burnt sienna and alizarin,” Mr. Howland added.

  “All the colors of happiness,” said Kate, coming from behind and startling us all.

  When we lived in Boston, we attended the Unitarian church near us. We went a few times a year and forgot God in between. In Barbados, on Sunday, we used to read prayers on the gallery for the house servants and their families. I suppose I was really very ignorant in religious matters. But I did love the Christmas story, and anything about angels, and the few hymns I knew. Also I was curious about the Holy Ghost when I happened to think about it.

  All this casual religion changed when we came to Amherst. God was everywhere, all week long. We attended the First Congregational Church every single Sunday, all four of us. Father pointed out the important Dickinsons: an older man with a fierce, vain face; a younger couple, quite stylish; and another youngish woman. The church itself was pale yellow Greek Revival, a grave and dignified building. The music was the best part.