Working Girls
Late March, 1865
How she’d arrived in New York City from Chicago was a blur of countryside and belching cities: A train full of Union men coming and going, returning from the war not yet over. Tattered, dirty uniforms. Slings. Empty sleeves. Straggly beards and scabbed faces. Trousers tied off at one knee. Scarred boots caked with dirt and blood. The ripe odor of earth and sweat, of endless days on the road. She felt as broken as they, but her pity for them was tempered by her own plight, her own reason for leaving the Midwest too horrific to remember, and too horrific to forget.
After a carriage ride from the railroad station at the far end of the city through shabby neighborhoods with scantily clad women perched in windows and waving seductively, the discreet sign on the brownstone near Sixth Avenue and Greene Street shocked her. Mrs. Russell, the female physician in Illinois who’d tried to save her still-born son, had sent her to her cousin’s, not saying that she ran a “Mission for the Rescue of Fallen Women.” Before she could decide to go elsewhere — where else could she go? — the door opened, and she was greeted by a stocky woman of perhaps fifty years.
“You must be Mrs. Post,” the woman said, her tone businesslike.
“I’m calling for Mrs. Evangeline Applewood,” she answered.
“I am Mrs. Applewood,” the woman said, and Daniella handed her a sealed envelope from Mrs. Russell. With a pursed smile beneath the dark hair that shaded her upper lip, Mrs. Applewood scanned Daniella’s formal letter of introduction, nodded, and led her into the drab parlor. Perhaps once elegant, its light blue walls were dingy and the blue and gold flowered carpet was faded. A dozen or so single wooden chairs formed a circle. Whether because of something said in the letter or the fact that it was from her cousin, Daniella couldn’t know, but the woman’s shoulders softened. “We have a room,” she said. “Shared, of course, and you will need to earn it.” She looked Ella up and down. “But you must be tired. You must sleep first.”
“Thank you,” Daniella whispered. She wanted to ask what kind of place this was. She was a preacher’s daughter and “fallen” sounded in sin, but she was very tired, and keenly aware she had no other choice. In Chicago, she’d trusted Mrs. Russell, and so now she must trust Mrs. Applewood. Unless she’d been wrong in trying (and failing) to save her abusive husband from drink and loose women, she was not a fallen sinner, although she was in need of rescue, of escaping from his bondage. If not for the shelter she was being given at the “Mission,” she would be lost in a strange city, terrified and on her own. She didn’t know any women her age — just twenty — who didn’t live with their parents or their husbands. How long could she stay at the Mission? What would happen then?
Mrs. Applewood showed Daniella to a room with two cots, separated by a table just wide enough for two chairs, creating the illusion of separate spaces. “In due course, you will have a roommate,” Mrs. Applewood said. A houseboy delivered Daniella’s things, and they said good night. While she’d been with Mrs. Russell, her former landlady, Mrs. O’Malley, had packed a duffel and small trunk for her. It contained three dresses, including her wedding dress and wedding Bible, inscribed, in her mother’s hand, with a family tree lopsidedly headed by Reverend and Mrs. Maysfield. Daniella’s name was on the left and her two dead siblings — designated only “Baby Son” and “Baby Daughter” — on the right. She was grateful now that she had not inscribed her own disappointing — and even dangerous — marriage to Mr. Warren Post, nor had she written the name of their only child, her stillborn Luke.
When Mrs. Applewood left, Daniella felt terribly alone: Her father dead; her mother at home in Ottawa, Illinois, often found in her own private world, mute and staring endlessly at a single blossom, tree or empty space; her infant Luke in heaven. She was free of her monster of a husband, but she was alone, disconnected. She pinned her few remaining dollars into the shoulder of her night dress, relieved not to have to worry right then about protecting herself or her things from a “fallen woman” and laid down. In the darkness, she remembered the night she’d desperately searched for her husband, finding him at Schuler’s Tavern, the stench of tobacco, rotten eggs and leather nearly suffocating her. Her face moistened with the memory of her husband’s boot coming at her, its strike on her bulging belly, the angry shouts of onlookers and her own screams as she fell to the floor. She let out a sob, grieving again for the loss of her stillborn child. How she had wanted to look into her son’s innocent eyes, but they were closed, as if against his father’s unspeakable violence, and the female physician had taken his body away. She’d not even been well enough to be with Mrs. Russell when she’d buried him.
The next morning, sitting opposite Mrs. Applewood in the Mission’s kitchen, a dark servant girl wearing a simple uniform with a buttoned bodice and a white bow collar, gave her a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. Her hands folded piously on the simple, rough-hewn table, Mrs. Applewood quizzed Daniella like a schoolteacher about her journey, her marriage, her upbringing, and then about her dead baby. Apparently Mrs. Russell had provided all the basic facts.
“I don’t know why you’d come here,” Mrs. Applewood scowled. “The city is overrun by prostitutes, what with all the immigrants and all those debutantes up from the South. I can’t save but a few of them and even then …”
“I didn’t come for that,” Daniella interrupted, her suspicions about “fallen women” confirmed.
“Then why New York?” Mrs. Applewood looked as if she’d had a distressing night. In fact, Daniella would learn later, one of the girls — her absent roommate — hadn’t returned from her day job, presumably relapsing to the whorehouse from which Mrs. Applewood had hoped to save her.
“I wanted to hear the Reverend Beecher preach,” Daniella said, remembering that her father used to talk about him with much admiration and respect. It was not the real reason, of course: Since Daniella’s mother could barely take care of herself and her hometown of Ottawa offered no opportunities to start over, Mrs. Russell, the female physician, had given her the money to get to Mrs. Applewood’s. Mrs. Applewood quieted at the name of the city’s most famous preacher, who held forth at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn.
“A penny ferry-ride away,” Mrs. Applewood said. “You will need a job.”
“Yes,” Daniella said. Growing up, she hadn’t expected to have to work outside her home, not even in one of the few professional occupations, such as teaching or midwifery, which were open to women. She didn’t have the education for either, although she’d gone to school through the age of fifteen, could read and write well — she’d excelled in penmanship — and she was competent enough to teach children. “I am good with numbers. And a needle. I’m told also that I have a nice hand.” She thought perhaps she could write correspondence or copy things for a writer. She didn’t know.
Mrs. Applewood nodded as if she’d heard this litany from every girl she’d rescued. Her sigh conveyed a fear that Daniella’s skills wouldn’t pay enough to satisfy the ambitions of a girl who’d come all the way from Chicago. Just then there was a knock on the door and Daniella heard the servant girl accompany someone to the parlor. She hurried into the kitchen, excited. “Mrs. Applewood, Madame — your nephew is here!”
Mrs. Applewood stood, touched her hair and pinched her cheeks. “Excuse me, Miss Maysfield. I will be back shortly.” Daniella noted the ease with which Mrs. Applewood, apparently instructed by Mrs. Russell, used her maiden name. Perhaps starting over could be just that easy. She would save her money and find a way to divorce Mr. Post. From now on, instead of Daniella, she would be simply Ella. Ella Maysfield. Still, there would be the problem of a job. Surely Mrs. Applewood was too pessimistic; Ella was a wronged married lady, not a rescued hussy; she’d been brought up as a good Christian woman, she knew how to work hard at honest work, and, unlike Mr. Post, who talked of career and culture but walked with whores, she would. She knew that she must. She wanted never to be dependent on a man like Mr. Post again.
When the servant girl left Ella unattended, she helped herself to another cup of coffee and another slice of Mrs. Applewood’s coarse, brown bread. She hadn’t had a proper meal for several days, but her stomach was churning with excitement. The bread calmed it. So did the cleanliness and order of Mrs. Applewood’s kitchen, not elegant, but home-like.
Mrs. Applewood returned more than half an hour later, rubbing her hands together. “Ask and ye shall receive,” she intoned, Biblical style. “Tomorrow morning you will start work with my nephew, Mr. Yale Desmond.”
“What sort of work?” she asked, excited.
“He is a photographer, Miss Maysfield. You will assist him in his studio.”
Ella hesitated. She’d never been photographed; her mother had thought it evil. “But Mrs. Applewood, I don’t know anything about photography.”
“You don’t need to do anything but what you are told,” Mrs. Applewood said sternly.
“Does he take photographs of people?” Ella asked, stalling for time while she tried to recall the exact nature of her mother’s condemnation of photography. Was it to the making of graven images? The sin of pride? Vanity? Or a superstitious concern that the person’s soul would be taken, too?
“Of course,” Mrs. Applewood said, seeming impatient. “What of it?”
“I just wondered, is all,” Ella stammered, making a quick decision. She needed a job. Mrs. Applewood had found her one. The woman seemed every bit as Christian as any back in Ottawa. This was New York. Like Chicago, but older, bigger. Perhaps things were modern here: Mrs. Applewood expected her girls to work in factories or shops; at home Ella and her friends had expected to work to make a comfortable, good Christian home for their husbands and many children. If there were any danger, she would face it, whatever it might be. She’d faced far worse. “Thank you,” she said. “It will be an honor.”
• • •
The next morning, Ella presented herself at Yale Desmond’s three-story brownstone at 107 Bleecker Street, three blocks from Mrs. Applewood’s Mission for the Rescue of Fallen Women. David, the houseboy, opened the door and ushered her into the first-floor parlor, which featured two damask sofas and several heavy walnut chairs carved with cherubs’ faces. The red carpet with ornate designs of green leaves, rusty-brown vines and golden octagonal medallions was soft under her feet. He gestured to a sofa. She sat, proudly separating the plaits of her blue dress to show the quality of the woven fabric and her handiwork to its best advantage. Numerous samples of Mr. Desmond’s work hung on the walls, nearly obscuring the dainty cream-colored wallpaper and its gold flecks. Here was a room equal to the finest in Ottawa — superior, obviously, to the modesty of the parsonage from which she’d come. And it was for his customers!
The houseboy left and returned moments later with Mr. Desmond, who stood in the doorway and nodded, as if pleased at what he saw. She met his gaze, taking in how handsomely he was dressed and how well-to-do he looked: He was at least six feet tall and had a mane of reddish-blond curls, clear blue eyes, and an intense way of looking at people. His square-toed leather shoes gleamed and the handkerchief in his breast pocket seemed to be of fine silk. Mrs. Applewood’s servant had told her at breakfast that although he was in his mid-twenties, he was a bachelor man, hinting that she might find herself a husband. Ella didn’t mention that she legally had a husband back in Illinois, a husband who’d promised comfort as well as art and travel, but who spent late nights in whorehouses, drinking his own comfort and mounting her roughly when he staggered home. The home he’d provided was hardly worthy of the name, a single room on the second floor of a drafty, two story boarding house, where she suffered the indignity of a shared privy in the narrow backyard. To do the wash, she had to carry buckets from the shared hydrant in the yard, heat water in a tub if there was wood for the small stove, and hang their clothes to dry inside while Mr. Post was at his supposed work. She needed a job more than a husband.
Mr. Desmond bowed slightly and sat on the sofa opposite her. “I assume you know nothing of photography,” he said.
“Quite right, sir, but willing to learn.”
“Have you had your photograph done?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Not even for an advert?” he said.
She didn’t take his meaning and he pushed on. “You’re staying with my aunt?”
“Yes, but I’ve not been rescued! I’m just in from Chicago and an acquaintance…”
“I know,” he interrupted, flushing.
“I’ve hardly met them,” she said, not knowing what else to call the rescued girls in Mrs. Applewood’s care.
“Pity,” he mumbled, then called to his houseboy, who appeared from the hallway.
“This is Miss Maysfield,” he said. “David here will show you the studio and where you will be working.”
Ella followed the boy to the back of the house, where a room with bright windows was set up with black drapes, high-backed chairs, mirrors, and a tripod for the photographer’s equipment. He then took her to an upstairs room with long tables and wooden baths of chemicals. She sniffed, startled by the sharp smell, not unlike Mr. Post’s whiskey.
“You’ll get used to the odor,” he said, not apologetically.
Her job was to prepare the papers on which Mr. Desmond printed his photographs. She would have to separate dozens of eggs, using only the clear white part, add an odiferous fluid labeled ammonium chloride, and then beat the mixture with a whisk until it frothed. After that, she was to strain the mixture through muslin and then float rag stock in the solution for a minute before hanging it to dry.
Mr. Desmond usually took photographs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays and prepared his prints on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so every other day Ella sensitized the albumen paper she’d prepared the day before, floating it on another solution for two and a half minutes. Mr. Desmond placed the paper in direct contact under a negative and exposed it to light until the desired darkness appeared. When he was satisfied with a print, her job was to fix it in yet another pungent solution and wash away the fixer.
Mr. Desmond had labeled each tray and given her a sheet on which he’d written out the steps. They were easy to follow, and while the work was physical and tiring, she made few mistakes. She received some relief from her routine on the days when dapper gentlemen and grand ladies came to sit for Mr. Desmond, often with their small children. Their presence was bittersweet. The women reminded her of who she might have become had Mr. Post been who she’d thought he was; the children broke her heart with longing for her stillborn son.
It took some time, sitting very still, to obtain a good photograph. Mr. Desmond often asked her to read to his subjects to help them pass the time. As a youngster, she’d read Moby-Dick, The House of Seven Gables, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and much of Dickens, but for the sittings, Mr. Desmond had her read shorter pieces. For the men, he asked her to read the stories of Edgar Allen Poe or news of the day, and for the ladies, the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. When she read “How Do I Love Thee?” her voice would break and the ladies would tear, but she could never tell whether they cried in sympathy with her emotions, or for their own loves, lost or unrequited.
That first week, Mrs. Applewood introduced her to the eight other girls in the house, calling her “the Chicago girl.” Ella thought immediately to say, “Mrs. Post,” so that they would know she wasn’t being rescued, but then remembered her new identity. “I go by Ella,” she said.
“Femme fatella,” one of the girls said, tossing back a mane of black curls. Ella understood “femme” but didn’t catch the exact meaning of the phrase, although Mrs. Applewood tsked. “Miss Maysfield is the daughter of a preacher. You will treat her with respect.” The way she said it, “daughter of a preacher” felt like a royal title.
“No disrespect intended,” the coal-headed beauty said insincerely.
“None taken,” Ella rushed, eager to avoid a conflict. “I don’t know much French.”
The girls’ patter continued, in more French-sounding words.
Mon dieu.
Oh la.
Voulez vous coucher.
Mrs. Applewood rapped her spoon on the table. “None of that,” she said. As a group, the girls appeared to be about Ella’s age, and, if not uniformly pretty, they all had lively, bright eyes and full figures. To a girl, their hairdos were expertly pinned and curled to best show off their features. But they were not outlandishly rouged liked the girls she’d seen with Mr. Post the terrible night she’d gone looking for him in the neighborhood taverns and found his wrath instead. If she’d not understood what was meant by “fallen,” she might have assumed they were potential friends. It was hard to picture these girls as the same as the painted ones she’d found Mr. Post with just a few weeks ago, their breasts falling out of their dresses, boldly offering themselves to him. And how those women squealed in amusement when they saw she was in the family way. They must have thought her foolish for hoping he would give up his drinking and whoring and become the husband and father she and her parents had expected him to be.
