Our Kind of People

by Carol Wallace

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Fans of Bridgerton will love this "exuberant novel of manners for our own gilded age" (Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra) as we follow the Wilcox family's journey through riches and ruin.

Among New York City's Gilded Age elite, one family will defy convention.

Helen Wilcox has one desire: to successfully launch her daughters into society. From the upper crust herself, Helen's unconventional--if happy--marriage has made the girls' social position precarious. Then her husband gambles the family fortunes on an elevated railroad that he claims will transform the face of the city and the way the people of New York live, but will it ruin the Wilcoxes first? As daughters Jemima and Alice navigate the rise and fall of their family--each is forced to re-examine who she is, and even who she is meant to love.

From the author of To Marry an English Lord, an inspiration for Downton Abbey, comes a charming and cutthroat tale of a world in which an invitation or an avoided glance can be the difference between fortune and ruin.

Release date: January 11, 2022

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 368

Sample

CHAPTER 1

the ladies lunch

May 1874

Helen Wilcox peered from her motionless carriage at the clock on the steeple of Grace Church and took a deep breath. It was noon. Six ladies would be arriving at her house on West Twenty-Sixth Street in half an hour for a luncheon to meet her elder daughter, Jemima. Six powerful ladies—the women who would decide whether Jemima would be invited to attend the highly exclusive Dancing Classes in the fall. Helen came from a family with deep roots in New York society, but the committee was known to be quixotic, eager to pounce on slights and improprieties. And here Helen sat, trapped in the chaotic traffic of Fourth Avenue as it inched toward Union Square. No experienced New York City hostess chose to run an errand the morning before she entertained guests to luncheon. But to Cook’s horror the rhubarb custard hadn’t even begun to set, so after a hasty consultation Helen had set out in the carriage to the French pastry-cook’s shop downtown. She now sat with a box of mille-feuilles on the seat beside her, counting down the minutes until her guests were due to arrive.

She rapped on the hatch in the roof of the carriage, which flipped open. The coachman, Morrison, peered down at her. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Don’t you think Fifth Avenue would be better? I’d hate to be late for my own guests.”

“Maybe so, ma’am,” Morrison answered. “Never worry, I’ll get you home in plenty of time for Miss Jemima’s luncheon.”

The hatch closed and the carriage turned westward on Eleventh Street. As they finally turned north and the horses eased into a trot, Helen heard a shout followed by a brief burst of invective from the carriage box as the vehicle came to a sudden stop. Morrison had originally been a groom in the Wilcox’s Wagon stables and his salty language sometimes reflected it.

The hatch opened again. “Beg pardon, ma’am. Only a big dray cut in front of me all of a sudden. We’ll be moving soon. Roadworks ahead, but traffic’s moving beyond.”

“Thank you, Morrison,” Helen said before he had a chance to go on. In most well-managed households servants like Morrison were unobtrusive, but Joshua had never bothered about formality and Morrison had been one of her husband’s first employees. Helen gazed out the window at an immense hole in the cobblestone roadway, from which a pickaxe emerged rhythmically while the carriage inched past. She should never have tried to go down to the Village to replace the ruined dessert . . . but she’d wanted every last detail to be just right. The streets of New York were always clogged with carriages and wagons and pedestrians and barefoot urchins. Joshua had grumbled so often about the traffic that Helen no longer heard his complaints, but she felt a new sympathy for him. After all, he ran a freight transport company. More traffic meant fewer deliveries, and thus had a direct effect on the Wilcox family’s household budget.

But according to Joshua, the congested streets had also created an unexpected opportunity. Over a year earlier, he had turned to her at breakfast and proudly announced his purchase of an elevated railroad. Just like that, as if he’d bought a new horse! It turned out to be a single engine with one car, running on an iron track thirty feet above Ninth Avenue. According to Joshua it sped between Dey Street downtown all the way north to Twenty-Ninth Street (or vice versa) in a mere twenty minutes! If only she could travel a similar distance with such speed, Helen thought, she’d be at home with plenty of time to re-pin her hair, check the flowers on the table, and reassure Jemima, in whose honor the luncheon was to be given.

It was rare for Helen to think of the Elevated with such enthusiasm. In the past year it had exerted an endless drain on Joshua’s attention and the family’s finances. It seemed to drink money, Helen thought: new track, new cars, the absolute requirement to expand. Of course she wanted it to be successful, and not just for the money; she loved her husband and wished to see his ambition fulfilled. But the risk! He was attempting something that had never been done before in New York, and if it failed . . . Helen could never complete that sentence, even in her thoughts. The prospect was simply too frightening. Besides, Joshua had assured her that if the Elevated succeeded as he expected, Helen could stop worrying about money and instead enjoy what it could purchase.

But the rosy future her husband had sketched for Helen a year earlier had not yet materialized. Joshua now had three partners, each of whom had been obliged to pour thousands of dollars into the Elevated. There had been no accurate way to forecast the expense of extending and reinforcing the track above New York’s streets, because it had never been done before. In the event, the process required not only vast sums of money but also engineers, architects, lawyers, permits, and cooperation from the city government. Like any groundbreaking enterprise, the project met with untold setbacks that Helen had heard about in detail. (Occasionally to well beyond the point of boredom.)

Yet as she sat fretting in her carriage, willing the brewery wagon in front of her to move forward, she thought of the little railroad in the sky with more respect; any alternative to crawling uptown at a snail’s pace would have been more than welcome. She was tempted to get out and walk—but then she would appear at her own luncheon in an untidy state, out of breath and overheated. She simply should not have risked leaving the house on a morning when her guests were so important.

Even Helen, raised in the traditions of conservative old New York, had her skeptical moments. Why should a self-appointed committee judge a young girl’s eligibility to join a series of dancing lessons that were really just a pretext for exclusion? Yet that was how New York society worked. The United States might be a democracy but some of its citizens still yearned for the ancient system of rank that had been abandoned by their forebears. In lieu of the clarity provided by titles, Americans were judged instead by vague and elastic concepts such as “background.” Helen’s family history was impeccable, but Joshua was an unconventional spouse for a woman in her world. So her daughters would be scrutinized with great care—not to say malice—before being invited to the Dancing Classes, which would in turn influence their success as debutantes. And here she sat, imprisoned in a carriage inching northward as the bells of the Church of the Ascension struck twelve.

Meanwhile, in the Wilcoxes’ brownstone house on West Twenty-Sixth Street, preparations for the luncheon proceeded smoothly in the kitchen and the dining room; a luncheon for eight ladies was an entirely routine matter. The table was set with spotless starched linen and heavy silver cutlery. Savory aromas wafted from the kitchen and the parlor was spotless. Nick, age thirteen, was up in the schoolroom reluctantly writing out French verbs under the steely eye of Mademoiselle Cabrol, who knew a lost cause when she saw it but had to earn a living somehow.

One floor down, in the bedroom she shared with her sister, Alice, Jemima was seated in front of the dressing table, fretting. “But where do you suppose Mama is?” she asked plaintively, watching in the mirror as Alice gathered her curly light brown hair into a braid.

“She said she’d be back by noon,” Alice soothed her. “Hold still, I’m almost at the end. Now pass me the ribbon.”

“She must be caught in traffic,” Jemima said, proffering a length of pink grosgrain. “I wish I weren’t so pale,” she added, pinching her cheeks to make them rosy.

Alice stepped back from the mirror. “But green eyes are so unusual,” she answered. “I think your looks are quite distinguished.”

Jemima sighed. Alice was a genuine beauty, with her big blue eyes and golden hair. Distinction wasn’t much consolation to a girl of seventeen who only wished to be found pretty by potential dancing partners. She picked up the hand mirror to gaze at her tidy braid, then stood and spun around, feeling the hem of her rose-pink dress swirl behind her with a satisfying swish.

“Come,” Alice said firmly. She led Jemima out into the upstairs hall and opened the door of the wardrobe, where a mirror hung. The hall was gloomy and the mirror cut her off below the knees, eliminating the thrilling novelty of her first full-length dress. But Jemima couldn’t help smiling. She looked practically grown up, she thought with satisfaction.

“Still,” she said. “I wish you were coming out first.”

“Nonsense,” answered Alice. “You’ll be a great success.”

“I won’t, you know,” Jemima countered. “I can never think what to say to boys.”

“You expect too much from them,” Alice said calmly. “You have to ask them question after question about their dogs and their schools, or whatever sport they play. Hold still now,” she added, and nipped into her parents’ bedroom. She came out rubbing her palms together.

“What’s that?” Jemima asked, backing away as Alice started to smooth back the hair at her temples.

“Just a tiny bit of Mama’s hair pomade,” Alice answered with a satisfied smile. “It keeps those flyaway bits in place. Tres soignée, as Mademoiselle would say.”

The sisters’ eyes met and they giggled in a very un-grown-up way.

The grandfather clock in the front hall struck quarter past twelve, and Jemima turned to Alice. “But Mama still isn’t here! What should I do?”

“The ladies are all quite fond of you. At any rate they will be very soon,” she said in a bracing way.

“You wouldn’t wait for Mama with me, would you? To keep me company?” Jemima asked.

“No,” Alice answered cheerfully. “They’re just ladies. They won’t bite you.”

So when the first guest rang the doorbell a little bit before twelve-thirty, Jemima was pacing up and down the parlor in her almost grown-up dress with her hands clasped behind her back so she couldn’t fidget with the ribbon on her braid. She knew what was expected of her. She would speak when spoken to, answer politely and cheerfully, agree with restrained enthusiasm to chance remarks about the weather or any other inoffensive subject. But she would have given anything, in that moment, to switch places with Alice.

CHAPTER 2

looked right through her

September 1874

Four months later, on a fine September afternoon, Jemima once again paced in the parlor waiting for her mother. She peered out the bay window: Morrison waited patiently on the box of the carriage with the reins slack in his hands. Jemima crossed to the big mirror set into the paneling of the front hall and untied the bow beneath her chin to seek a more flattering angle for her hat. She had been so eager to put up her hair, another of the marks of adulthood for a girl. But now her best straw bonnet perched oddly on the thick braid Moira, the Wilcoxes’ housekeeper, had pinned to the back of her head. And the hairpins scratched, too. Mademoiselle was fond of a French saying, Il faut souffrir pour être belle—“One must suffer to be beautiful.” Jemima knew she would never be beautiful, but it seemed women also had to suffer to be merely presentable—which was hardly fair. Neither her father nor her brother made any effort to achieve their own good looks. She turned and smoothed her dress over her newly corseted waist, which to her eye seemed delightfully slim but according to Mademoiselle verged on maigre—“scrawny.” Thus, not a compliment. But generously proportioned women like Mama’s friend Mrs. Burke must suffer terribly with their waists and ribs squeezed tight by whalebone and lacing. (Meanwhile gentlemen simply shrugged on their frock coats, tied their cravats, and got on with life.) Overhead she could hear her mother’s quick steps as she headed down from her bedroom. “We may stop at Mama’s for tea,” her mother was telling Moira. “But we’ll certainly be home in plenty of time for dinner.”

“And Mr. Wilcox?” Moira asked, peering over the balustrade. “He’ll be dining at home this evening?”

“I haven’t heard otherwise,” Helen answered as she reached the first floor. “You look very nice, dear,” she said. “But I think your hat might look more becoming this way.” Deftly she untied the bow, re-settled the hat, and tied it again—all as if Jemima were only nine years old instead of seventeen. At least there was no one to watch besides Moira, gazing down from the landing.

“Enjoy yourself,” she said to Jemima. “You already look like a very fine young lady.”

“Thank you, Moira,” Jemima answered, since fine young ladies had to be polite even when people told flattering fibs.

“Make sure Alice finishes her reading before she starts practicing the piano,” Helen instructed Moira. “And Nick must not leave the house until he has done his sums. Tell Cook he’s not to sneak out through the kitchen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Moira said, though all three of them knew that Nick’s movements were beyond their control. Boys, to Jemima’s constant frustration, had a great deal of freedom and Nicholas Wilcox took advantage of it.

Once they were settled in the carriage, Jemima’s mother patted her knee. “Your aunt Dora’s going to join us at Stewart’s,” she said. “She wants to help choose your dress.”

“Oh, Mama!” Jemima exclaimed. “Such a fuss! Couldn’t you stop her?”

“No, dear. She’s as excited about the Dancing Classes as you are.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Jemima answered. “Since I can barely stand the idea of them.”

“Surely it’s a good thing to learn some of the steps and get to know your partners before you are officially out in society.” Helen met Jemima’s worried gaze. “Perhaps you could think of the classes as a rehearsal for your first season,” she suggested.

Jemima glanced at the familiar storefronts on Sixth Avenue and took a deep breath before asking, “Must I come out into society? Papa says a debut is just a way for girls to find husbands, but that’s not how you two met.”

“No, but it’s the way people like us . . .” Helen failed to complete the sentence and began again. “Traditionally young people from families like ours socialize at dances. It’s just the way New York works. And I know you may feel a little bit apprehensive, but—”

“I never know what to say to boys,” Jemima interrupted her mother.

“You don’t seem to have trouble talking to Nick,” Helen pointed out.

“But he’s not someone I might meet at a party,” Jemima protested. “And dance with, and maybe have to marry.”

“You don’t have to marry anyone,” Helen put in swiftly. “Least of all at the age of eighteen.”

Then the truth came out: “I know, but, Mama, what if I’m a wallflower?” Jemima asked. “Stuck on one of those little gilded chairs next to the chaperones, while all the other girls whirl around with handsome partners.”

Helen sighed. Jemima’s vivid imagination so often ran away with her. “Sweetheart, you will not be a wallflower, the chaperones will make sure you dance as much as you like. And as far as conversation goes, you only need to ask the very simplest questions like, ‘Isn’t it warm in here?’ or ‘Where will your family spend Christmas?’ ” Jemima fiddled with one of her glove buttons and looked unconvinced. “Would it help to think of the boys you’ll meet as simply older versions of Nick?” Helen went on.

Jemima’s distaste was visible. “That wouldn’t be appealing.”

Helen took Jemima’s gloved hand in her own. “Lots of us are nervous about meeting new people,” she said, “but fretting never improved anything. So in a minute we’re going to get out of the carriage and go into Stewart’s. Remember that your grandmother has offered to pay for your dress, so be polite. She has excellent taste and you’ll look very pretty.”

Jemima answered, “I am always polite,” but she was unconvinced about her looks.

Yet her mother was correct in one way; if a girl were to be transformed anywhere, that magic might occur at A. T. Stewart’s. The store occupied an entire square block at Broadway and Ninth Street, with its six sales floors illuminated by a gigantic central skylight. Silks and woolens and velvets, ribbons and laces woven in dozens of patterns lay strewn on the counters behind which stood serious young women in black, ready to show and measure and cut. Ladies strolled in pairs or threesomes, murmuring to each other. Single women perched at counters, nodding earnestly to saleswomen as they fingered silk flowers or compared brocade patterns. The very air was perfumed.

Jemima had been to Stewart’s, of course, but never as a budding young lady whose appearance was important enough to require the advice of experts like Aunt Dora and Grandmama. She spotted the two of them across the sales floor examining a bolt of lavender taffeta. “Mama,” she said, and touched her mother’s elbow, “look, they’re at that counter over to the left.” As they began to walk down the long aisle, the imposing figure of Annabelle van Ormskirk came gliding toward them.

Impeccably sheathed in slate blue merino, her rather small gray eyes flickering from face to face like a queen acknowledging her loyal subjects, New York’s social leader cleaved a path between the cases of silk flowers and the bolts of ribbon in every imaginable color. Helen spotted her at the same moment as Jemima, and her heart sank. Annabelle had been a bully since they had played together in Washington Square Park as little girls, and marriage to one of the most significant landowners in New York City had given her legitimate social power to determine the limits of polite society. Individuals whom Mrs. Van Ormskirk acknowledged (or “knew,” in New York’s parlance) were invited everywhere that counted. Those whom she ignored might as well not exist. Time seemed to slow down as Annabelle paced toward Helen, who felt Jemima move closer as if to protect her. She tried to approximate a cheerful smile, and said clearly, “Good morning, Annabelle.”

Did Annabelle’s steps slow down? She certainly met Helen’s gaze. She even, Helen thought, glanced at Jemima. Then, impassive and unspeaking, she averted her eyes and continued down the aisle.

Helen felt heat flood to her face and couldn’t help glancing around. Had anyone seen? Were there witnesses to her humiliation? By her side, Jemima frowned. “Why didn’t Mrs. Van Ormskirk answer you?” she asked.

Helen took a deep breath and wished that tears hadn’t just welled up in her eyes—Jemima noticed everything. “I don’t know,” she answered, searching her reticule for a handkerchief. Silently, Jemima proffered her own. They had drifted to a halt near a display of silk camellias, while a few dozen feet away, Dora and her mother were frowning. “Sometimes Annabelle speaks to me and sometimes she doesn’t,” Helen answered flatly.

“How can she get away with that? It’s so cruel!” Jemima slipped her hand into Helen’s. “Let’s go meet Grandmama.”

“Of course,” Helen answered. But before they could move, she heard her name called from another direction.

“That Annabelle van Ormskirk is a mean cat!” Sylvia Burke exclaimed from a yard away, then surged forward to kiss both Helen and Jemima. “I saw her cut you, Helen. I’ve never witnessed anything so rude in my life.” It was too bad Mrs. Burke’s voice was so loud, Jemima thought. She seemed to be attracting quite a bit of attention.

“Annabelle has always been a law unto herself,” Helen murmured. “If you’ll excuse me, Sylvia, my mother is waiting for me. We’re choosing fabric for Jemima’s first evening dress.”

“Lucky girl!” Mrs. Burke said as she beamed at Jemima. “Helen, will you two come for tea sometime soon? I’d like to get to know this lovely young lady.” She smiled warmly at Jemima, who couldn’t help smiling back.

“Of course I will,” Helen said. “I promise.” Then there was more kissing and Mrs. Burke fluttered away, turning back to wave at them halfway down the aisle.

“Does Grandmama know Mrs. Burke?” Jemima asked.

“No, dear,” Helen answered. “Mr. Burke made his money in plumbing. Far too indelicate for your grandmother, even if Sylvia weren’t so effusive.”

“Plumbing,” Jemima repeated with a grin. “How plebeian.”

“Don’t mock your grandmother,” Helen reproved her gently. “She grew up in a different time.”

“Oh, I know, Mama, but it does seem a little silly. Papa’s money comes from freight wagons and passenger cars. Though—is that why Mrs. Van Ormskirk was so rude?”

“Mostly,” Helen answered. “You know Papa wasn’t the kind of man my parents or their friends knew socially. Our wedding caused a great deal of chatter.”

“And Grandmama doesn’t really like Papa,” Jemima murmured. It seemed odd to discuss this amid the displays at Stewart’s, but she wanted to take advantage of her mother’s momentary frankness. “Sometimes she looks at him and just sighs. Is it because he comes from upriver?” She could see her grandmother and aunt perched at their counter just out of earshot. “Did she want you to marry a lawyer like Uncle Noble?”

“Sweetheart, that is a story for another time,” Helen protested. “Let’s go see what Mama and your aunt Dora have found for you before they get tired of waiting for us.”

“They look so much alike, sitting on those stools like china dolls,” Jemima commented.

“Yes, they do,” said her mother, “but don’t say it to their faces.”

In fact, Selina Maitland and Dora Latimer made a very pretty picture, poised next to a pile of silks on the mahogany counter. They shared the demure doll-like prettiness that had made Selina the most popular debutante in New York in 1838. She had relished presiding over a tea table on Washington Square in the 1840s and ’50s, when New York was still a provincial city, untouched by industry or immigration. In those days some three hundred thousand people lived in roughly five square miles, but the ones who mattered to Selina’s friends numbered in the hundreds. Many of the families were related by blood and many more by the kinds of discreet, profitable interlocking businesses that could be run by gentlemen. For scores of years they had managed each other’s money and written each other’s wills. They had backed each other’s shipping ventures, bought each other’s houses, and married each other’s cousins. They did their work with pens and handshakes, buttoned into high-collared shirts and long snug coats as if to demonstrate their distance from manual labor. ...