Our kind of people, p.1
Our Kind of People, page 1
Advance Praise for Our Kind of People
“Carol Wallace has written an exuberant novel of manners for our own gilded age. And as one might expect from the coauthor of The Official Preppy Handbook and To Marry an English Lord, not a detail is out of place, from the calling cards to the kid gloves. New money and old traditions combust on contact; Our Kind of People is rich, rousing, and beautifully researched.”
—Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra
“In Our Kind of People, Wallace draws us intimately into the opulent yet precarious elite world of late-1800s New York, and one family’s quest to cast its own destiny on the razor’s edge between glory and ruin. At times wickedly humorous, at times tender and tragic, this novel illuminates the strengths, vulnerabilities, and dreams that are present within all of us. Wallace’s effervescent, pitch-perfect prose stole my heart.”
—Roxanne Veletzos, author of The Girl They Left Behind and When the Summer Was Ours
“Evoking the excitement and glamour of a booming nineteenth-century New York, Our Kind of People charts one family’s rise, fall, and ultimate triumph in a changing world. Wallace fills her world with careful historical detail and an acute understanding of the nuances of New York high society.”
—Julia Kelly, author of The Light Over London
“Move over, Edith Wharton! I adored Our Kind of People, enthralled by its utterly engaging, not-quite-socially-acceptable Wilcox family, and the stratifications they endured and conquered in nineteenth-century New York. What a rare pleasure in these distractible times to read a novel I couldn’t put down, so happy to root for the high and mighty getting their just deserts. Thank you and brava, Carol Wallace, for giving us the fictional key to a long-ago city of dreams.”
—Elinor Lipman, author of Good Riddance and On Turpentine Lane
“A delightful glimpse into the delicate yet cutthroat world of gilded age society, Our Kind of People is a reminder that in the ever-shifting sands of New York’s high society, one truth remains constant: that a little audacity and a lot of heart can go a long way.”
—Bryn Turnbull, author of The Woman Before Wallis
Also by Carol Wallace
fiction
Leaving Van Gogh
The Wrong House
Fly by Night
nonfiction
To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery
All Dressed in White: The Irresistible Rise of the American Wedding
Victorian Treasures: An Album and Historical Guide for Collectors
The Debutante’s Guide to Life
The Official Preppy Handbook
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2021 by Carol Wallace
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wallace, Carol, 1955– author.
Title: Our kind of people / Carol Wallace.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021040575 (print) | LCCN 2021040576 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525540021 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780525541684 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3573.A42563 O97 2022 (print) | LCC PS3573.A42563 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040575
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040576
Cover design: Sarah Oberrender
Cover photograph: Richard Jenkins
Book design by Lorie Pagnozzi, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Advance Praise for Our Kind of People
Also by Carol Wallace
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: The Ladies Lunch
Chapter 2: Looked Right Through Her
Chapter 3: The Spring House
Chapter 4: A Swift Courtship
Chapter 5: Presenting Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox
Chapter 6: Ballroom Manners
Chapter 7: Society at Play
Chapter 8: But That’s a Fortune
Chapter 9: Outrageous
Chapter 10: Intriguing
Chapter 11: Disastrous
Chapter 12: The Talk of the Town
Chapter 13: Ladylike
Chapter 14: Social Ties
Chapter 15: Rural Pursuits
Chapter 16: Money Matters
Chapter 17: Not Quite Our Kind, Dear
Chapter 18: Not the Same Without Her
Chapter 19: “Dear Mr. Castle”
Chapter 20: New Year’s Day
Chapter 21: The Hudson Elevated Railroad
Chapter 22: Real Money
Chapter 23: The Word Is “Grand”
Chapter 24: The Appropriate Setting
Chapter 25: All Present and Accounted For
Chapter 26: Drama on the Stage and Off
Chapter 27: What Was She Thinking?
Chapter 28: Above It All
Chapter 29: R. S. V. P.
Chapter 30: Belles of the Ball
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
In loving memory of the world’s best mother-in-law, Peggy Hamlin
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 bo ught 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.”
