Sunflower Sisters, page 2
She turned. “I’m called Alice,” she said, as he prodded them more urgently up the platform steps.
“I don’t know if she’ll ever be free to find Brevoort Place,” Mother said.
“It’s something at least,” I said.
Alice slowly mounted the steps with her two children and gathered them to her. The auctioneer gave his usual recitation, suggesting a separate price for Alice and her children, and the gavel quickly fell.
“Sold,” called the auctioneer. “One hundred dollars for James and the infant, Anthony. Alice, nine hundred dollars.”
Alice fell to her knees in front of the auctioneer, begging to keep her children.
Mother turned away in terrible temper, heading up Chalmers Street toward the hotel, and we followed, the misery of those sold still keen in our minds, Alice’s frantic wails echoing around us, her agony beyond sympathy.
I’d seen that look before on Mother. After Father died, leaving her with eight children to raise. When we cried as she moved us all to strange New York City.
The look that said, We will change this terrible situation. Or die trying.
Chapter
2
Georgy
Brevoort Place, New York City
April 1861
Uncle Edward dropped me at the New York Hospital, a massive, stone wedding cake of a place, an oasis of calm after our carriage fought its way down Broadway, the street teeming with frantic citizens mobilized by the prospect of impending war.
Hours earlier, the day had started as any other. I stood during breakfast in the dining room at our home at 8 Brevoort Place, a four-story brownstone-fronted town house on the east side of Manhattan, as my sister Jane fixed the fallen hem of my new dress, a black silk simply relieved in white.
Mother sat at the table, closest to the fire, clothed in her morning dress, directing Margaret, one of our two day maids, in her white servant’s cap and apron, where the hot dishes should go. Only three of my six sisters, Abby, Jane, and Carry, were gathered there that day, with Mary and Hatty off traveling and Eliza at her country home.
Abby, the eldest, sat next to Mother, bent over her correspondence.
Jane, her next in age, crouched at my feet, intent on my fallen hem, her black sewing box with the mother-of-pearl flowers splayed open beside her on the carpet, a surgical kit of needles and threads, ten shades of white alone.
I smoothed back her red-blond hair, which waved down past her shoulders and always brought to mind Botticelli’s Venus. “Do hurry, Jane.”
She pulled at my skirt. “Stay still, Georgy, or I’ll draw blood.”
Our youngest sister, Carry, sat on Mother’s other side, feeding our little white mongrel dog, Pico, scraps of doughnut.
“Frank Bacon will like that dress,” Carry said.
I brushed a phantom speck off my skirt. “I’m not interested in Frank Bacon in the least.”
Abby looked up from her letter. “You shun a perfectly good beau when others go without.”
“Marry him yourself, then.”
Color rose in Abby’s cheeks and I instantly regretted those words. At thirty-three years old, Abigail had long since stopped waiting for our dear cousin Theodore Winthrop to propose; and at thirty-one, Jane no longer had any prospects either—her suitors had all married others or joined the military in preparation for war or drifted off to Europe. So it was generally believed Abby and Jane would never marry.
“He won’t come around forever,” Abby muttered.
“With that little beard of his cut so short, he looks like an Italian king,” I said.
The trill of the doorbell sounded from the front of the house, sending our devoted Margaret, cap ribbons fluttering, out to answer it, as we froze like startled elk at the idea of a morning visitor invading our sacred space.
“At this hour?” Mother asked.
In seconds Uncle Edward bounded in, folded New York Tribune in one hand. Uncle was always welcome, a fine man whose name was repeated with praise by all who knew him, his only two faults a touch of vanity and a bit of a loose tongue. His bright appearance was so like Father’s had been, his honest blue eyes full of charity and love. He even dressed as Father had, in quality cutaway coats, his pant legs nicely tailored, accentuating his well-rounded calves.
Mother nodded to him. “Oh, Edward, it’s you. Do sit.”
“I’m on my way to the club—can’t stay long. What news. It’s pandemonium out there. How can you all be so calm?”
“Have a cup of tea. Jane found sugar harvested in Haiti without the cruelty of slavery.”
“Certainly you’ve heard?” he asked, looking from one of us to the next.
Carry leaned in, her hair ribbon dangling close to the syrup on her griddle cakes. “Heard what, Uncle?”
“I know you’ve been following the events in South Carolina closely….”
“Yes,” Abby said.
“Word just in from Charleston gives the profound impression—”
“Uncle, please,” Abby said.
“—that Fort Sumter has been fired upon.”
Carry jumped up as if stung. “We’re at war!”
“Confederates fired the first shot at four-thirty, before sunrise, upon the national flag. Major Anderson is withdrawing from the island. The citizens of Charleston stood on rooftops and cheered.”
Jane tied off her thread and tossed the little scissors into her sewing box with a clatter. “So the South is indeed seceding. It’s all so upsetting.”
“Which states will stay with the Union?” Mother asked.
“All the Northern states have sent dispatches to President Lincoln offering money and men. Maryland and Kentucky have yet to declare.”
Mother stood. “Margaret, bring the mahogany table down from my room. And the lint press. We will set up in the front parlor. There will be great need for bandages.”
Uncle Edward walked toward the rear hallway to the bedroom stairs. “Where’s your son? Still abed so late?”
Mother stepped into his path. “What do you need with Charley?”
“Well, he may want to enlist. There’s already a center up on Broadway. The Winthrop brothers will join, I’m sure.”
“His cousins are grown men, Edward. Charley is just twenty-one. You want to encourage your poor, dead brother’s only son?”
Uncle Edward tossed the newspaper onto the table and Carry snatched it up. “They’ve been calling for nurses all week in case of war. Recruiting this morning at the hospital.”
“Nurses? I’ve never heard—”
“We’re at war, Mother,” Abby said.
I stepped toward Uncle Edward. “I’m applying.”
Abby dropped her pen. “Goodness me, Georgy. A nurse? They make female convicts do that work. Ten days in jail and then it’s off to nurse at Bellevue.”
“This is different,” I said. “Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is involved. I’ve read the notices in the paper all week. Preparing a brigade of trained nurses.”
“All nonsense,” Jane said.
I slid my gloves from the mantel and tried to avoid the sight of the ivory-handled fan, fanned out like a peacock’s tail, displayed there in the glass box Mother had made for it. The thank-you to Father and me for our actions that day on the beach.
I turned to face Carry. “It is all very proper. Overseen by a committee of esteemed doctors. And who will stop me, with none of you yet dressed?”
Uncle Edward touched my forearm. “Georgy, it is not a pastime for a refined young woman. Assisting crude soldiers with their bedpans—”
“I couldn’t care less about being refined, Uncle.”
Abby looked to Mother. “She’ll catch something dreadful.”
“I’m twenty-eight. I can manage myself, thank you. Besides, Eliza serves as a nurse up in Fishkill.”
Mother hurried to me and smoothed one hand down my back. “Eliza bandages the locals and hands out tonics. This is war, Georgy dear. Isn’t it best we stay together through this?”
I tried not to look at Mother’s careworn face or meet her steely gaze; she was always able to woo me with her kindness and platitudes. Jane Eliza Woolsey was a smart opponent, formidable in her tenderness and grace. “There are many other ways to contribute to the cause, here at home,” she said.
I smoothed two fingers down her powdered cheek. How could I tell her I’d go mad here on the sidelines, in this dear old house filled with reminders of Father, as the whole world marched off to war?
“I will not just sit here, Mother.”
Carry held up the newspaper. “There’s a whole list of nursing qualifications in here and you have none of them.”
I pulled on my bonnet with the pink rosebud face trimmings and tied the ribbons under my chin. “I’ve seen it.”
Carry read from the paper. “In order to earn the coveted blue ticket, candidates must possess the grace to submit to firm discipline—”
Abby laughed. “May be challenging for someone Father called his wild child—”
“—and the willingness to wear very plain regulation nursing costume.”
“Certainly wear that French bonnet for the committee,” Jane said. “It marks you as a fly-away for sure.”
“Stay, dear,” Mother said. She caressed the golden locket she wore on a chain around her neck, mourning jewelry she’d worn for Father, a jeweled spider embedded in the cover. “Think how those who’ve gone before us would be pleased by our war work safe here at home.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe, Mother.”
“You can’t walk to the hospital alone,” Abby said.
I stepped toward the door. “Since I am his favorite, Uncle Edward will surely drop me on his way to the club, won’t you, Uncle?”
Uncle Edward studied the floor and barely nodded.
“Father wouldn’t have wanted this,” Carry said.
Father. I stopped and turned to her. “How would you know what Father would have wanted, Carry? You were an infant when he died.”
Carry looked down at her plate, and I caught a glimmer of a tear. I’d gone too far again.
I hurried to the door.
Abby pushed back her chair and stood. “Every Florence Nightingale in New York will be there, competing. And they’ll only take a small number.”
“One hundred, actually. And I’m bound to be first in line, thanks to the early hour.”
Uncle Edward and I stepped down the hall, past the front parlor to the door.
“You need to be over thirty years old,” Carry called after me. “And quite plain. You’re not anywhere near ugly enough!”
* * *
—
I stepped into the marble-columned hospital hall and found it nearly full with my fellow early risers. Women from all walks of life packed the chilly room, a lucky few seated on the oak benches, most standing, some with a child or two in tow. A woman dressed in a long gray cape, her doughy, round face remarkably like Mary Todd Lincoln’s, distributed applications and pencils.
“A line, please, ladies,” she called out over the crowd, exhaling a little white cloud as she spoke.
“Why is there no fire lit in here?” I asked.
“If we had male applicants, there would be.” She handed me a two-page application and a small pencil. “If you can complete this quickly, you may have a chance to get in right away—a candidate just dropped out, sick with fear about going before the doctors’ panel, poor thing. Wait down that hall to be called into the committee room.”
I glanced at the forms. “It says ‘Complete in ink.’ ”
She shrugged. “The committee hasn’t complained yet. And they’ve seen fifty applicants already today. Accepted twenty-three.”
I penciled in my name and address: 8 Brevoort Place, New York City. Surely that would please the examining board, an esteemed address, near the famous Brevoort hotel. I stopped, pencil in midair. Age. Of course, I was well underage, two years in fact. What if I stretched the truth and wrote 30? I left it blank.
The woman leaned closer. “Don’t say I told you, but they’re looking for head nurses—matronly sorts who won’t rouse the affections of the patients with fancy fashion and smiles.” She sent a pointed look toward my necklace. “Last lady who went in there wore earbobs and they cast her out quick as she got in.”
“This is a family piece I wear every day. I’ll take my chances.”
“And what about that bonnet? Not to overstep, but those flowers—”
I hurried toward the committee room as I ripped the tender French rosebuds off my bonnet and tucked them up my sleeve.
After waiting in the hallway for what felt like an eternity, I heard my name called and stepped in to stand before the board. There sat five men, most of them snow-haired and dressed in black suits, sitting broomstick straight behind two oak tables pushed together, a tented paper name tag before each.
I handed Dr. Harris the application.
“Good day, Miss…Woolsey, is it? Would you state your full name?”
“Georgeanna Muirson Woolsey.”
“And why, Miss Woolsey, would you like to join the ranks of the Women’s Central Association of Relief?”
“I wish to make an equal contribution to that of a soldier, sir.”
Two doctors to my far right exchanged glances.
“That may be impossible, Miss Woolsey,” Dr. Harris said. “Since you will not be on the battlefield.”
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t be, sir. It seems unfair they will be dying while I sit home.”
“Tell us your particulars, Miss Woolsey.”
“If you can tell me what particulars you are interested in.”
Two doctors examined what appeared to be a restaurant menu, while another cleaned out his pipe, tapping the bowl on his palm.
“Well, would you consider yourself a detail-oriented person?” Dr. Harris asked.
“Yes, Doctor.”
“How so, Miss Woolsey?”
“I wouldn’t, for example, ask an applicant to sign an application such as this in ink if only a pencil was provided.” The doctors shifted in their seats. “Or leave the great hall out there unheated when women and children wait there, some for hours.”
Dr. Compton laced his fingers and sat forward. He looked younger than the rest and wore a prominent brow, and a permanently pained expression. “An unheated hall will be nothing compared to some of the unpleasant conditions you would be expected to work in, Miss Woolsey.”
“Only martyrs tolerate hardship when simple solutions can be found, Dr. Compton. I do my best to solve problems.”
He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “It’s just a matter of time before you and your fellow nurses will be switching things over with your hoops, giving unlimited oranges to the men with dysentery, and making the sure surgeons mad.”
“I don’t wear a hoop, Dr. Compton.”
“And what of your education, Miss Woolsey?” Dr. Harris asked.
“As a child I attended Miss Murdock’s School in Boston, and then the Rutgers Female Institute here in Manhattan, and finished at the Misses Anables’ Young Ladies’ Seminary in Philadelphia, whereupon I traveled to India and Egypt with my younger sister Eliza.”
“Ah, a Grand Tour?” Dr. Harris asked.
“Men have done it for centuries. In my family women broaden our horizons as well.”
“Your school marks?” Dr. Compton asked.
“Quite good, Dr. Compton. On my commencement day our teacher Mr. Holan joked to Mother that if she did not remove her daughters from the school the trustees would not be able to afford to give any more medals.”
Several of the doctors twittered at that.
“Languages?” Dr. Harris asked.
“German, French, Latin, and Italian. I learn quickly and the thought of having a teacher like Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is most stimulating, sir. The first woman to earn a medical degree in this country? It would be a tremendous honor to be in the same room with her. I’ve entertained the notion of opening a nursing school of my own some—”
Dr. Compton leaned in. “A school for female nurses?”
“Is that such a foreign concept?”
“And what of our dedicated male nurses? Should they go home and knit?”
“They can do as they like, Dr. Compton. Perhaps join their brothers in battle.”
“Were you raised with servants in the home?” Dr. Harris asked.
“Kate, the cook; Margaret, a maid; faithful William in the pantry is—”
Dr. Compton straightened his cuffs. “Must we hear the entire household staff list?”
“Mother employs help, but I’ve always been expected to perform domestic tasks.”
Dr. Harris sifted through his papers. “Nursing is hard work, especially for someone not used to adversity and so, well, privileged. Do you cry easily?”
“I don’t cry, Doctor. Ever, in fact.”
Dr. Benson raised an eyebrow.
“We are looking for women who are not averse to plainness of dress,” Dr. Compton said. “You know nurses are not allowed to wear jewelry of any kind.”
I glanced down at the bodice of my dress, to Father’s brass watch fob I wore as a necklace. “I wear this so often it is a part of me.”
Dr. Harris gathered the papers of my application and tapped them on the table. “I’m afraid we are done here, Miss Woolsey.”
I touched the fob. “I will not wear this while tending patients, gentlemen. It is my father’s watch fob. I’ve worn it every day since he died. I was very young when it happened. We lived in Boston at the time and he perished at sea commuting from New York to Boston on the steam packet Lexington.”
Dr. Harris set down his pen.
“It was a terribly cold night, the mercury at ten degrees below zero, and floating ice filled Long Island Sound. The alarm of fire was given as flames spread through the cotton bales in the ship’s cargo bay. Of the crew and one hundred forty-three passengers, only four survived. My father was not among them.”
