The Boston Girl

The home I ended up at wasn’t the biggest one on the street but very elegant inside. A maid wearing a uniform and a cap answered the door, took my coat, and asked for my name. For a girl who grew up in a cold-water flat it was like walking into a dream or a movie.

It was chilly outside but it felt like a June afternoon in that room, and not just because of the fireplace. The place was covered with roses: on the sofa, the rug, and the curtains, even on the china—pink roses.

The maid introduced me as Miss Abby Brown. That brought me down to earth. I couldn’t be Addie Baum even when I was pretending to be the imaginary secretary of an imaginary columnist.

Most of the women at the meeting were old but the hostess couldn’t have been more than thirty and very fashionable, which was rare in Cambridge those days. It still is, don’t you think?

I don’t remember her name but when I explained why I was there instead of Miss Cavendish, she sent me to the back of the room so I wouldn’t disturb anyone with my note taking. She was perfectly polite about it but I still felt as insulted and embarrassed as that night I tried to play charades at Rockport Lodge.

I stopped feeling sorry for myself the moment the speaker walked in. She was a black woman with gray hair and a short string of pearls around her neck. Mrs. Mary Holland—that’s a name I never forgot—was there to talk about the anti-lynching crusade.

Mrs. Holland was a grandmotherly type with a kind face but her message was about as far from grandmotherly as you can get. She was there to shock and rally those women to her cause.

She started with a story about a sober, churchgoing Negro man who was lynched because he opened a grocery across the street from a white man’s store. Her eyes filled with tears as she talked about a sweet twelve-year-old boy who had been murdered for smiling at a white girl. There were thousands of stories like

that, she said, and a hundred about white women who had been lynched for speaking out against the murders.

She was ferbrennt—you know that word? Like she was on fire. She had those women on the edge of their seats. By the end of the speech, every last one of them agreed to sign a national petition and give money to make lynching a federal crime.

Mrs. Holland said she knew it was hard to believe that such horrors were happening in America in the twentieth century. She pulled a big envelope out of her bag and said she had the proof, but warned us not to look at the photographs “unless you have the stomach to face the evil men can do.”

I thought I should look at the pictures to see if there was something I could use in the column. I didn’t get past the first one. Two black men were hanging by their necks on a post—like one you’d hang a sign on. Their hands had been tied behind them; their feet were just a few inches off the ground. On either side of the ­bodies, dozens of white men were lined up and looking straight at the ­camera; some of them were leaning forward to make sure they got into the picture.

And as if that wasn’t horrible enough, the picture was printed on a postcard. What kind of person would put a stamp on a thing like that, and who on earth would he send it to?

I went back to my room feeling sick about the whole human race and spent the weekend trying to squeeze as much of what I’d seen and heard into a few paragraphs. I was sure that Cornish would cut the whole thing, but I was going to try. Didn’t a story about women trying to right a terrible wrong belong on the women’s page?

When Cornish read it he practically ran into Mort’s office and closed the door. They were in there for what seemed like a very long time and when they came out, Mort marched out of the newsroom with his head down and my story in his hand. Cornish said he was taking it to the publisher, who would make the call.

I started to wonder if I was going to get fired. But believe it or not, they ran the story. The sister-in-law had already telephoned the publisher to make sure that her meeting was mentioned in the paper. The secretary upstairs told me there had been a lot of phone calls that morning and a visit from the publisher’s wife, who was a big supporter of the anti-lynching campaign.

They took out what I wrote about the postcards and they did not print the names of the women who had been there. They also buried it. Seen and Heard was usually featured on the women’s page, but this time it started on the bottom, and most of it jumped to the back of the classified section.

People found it anyway and some of them called to cancel their subscriptions. One man said that his wife had fainted when she read the gruesome details and threatened to sue the newspaper. Believe me, there was nothing gruesome in that article, but there were a lot of disgusting phone calls. It was the first time I heard the word ­nigger, and I heard it a lot.

On the other hand, Miss Cavendish got a lovely note from an important Unitarian minister who thanked her for paying attention to such a national disgrace. The president of Wellesley College and a state senator sent compliments, too.

Mort said it would all be forgotten by the next day and I guess it was, but in my little corner of the world it was a big event. Miss Chevalier called to find out if I had written the piece. She said it was magnificent. “I only wish your name had been on it.”

Betty got five copies of the newspaper and sent “my” story to the president of the National Council of Jewish Women. She told me they came out against lynching even before Leo Frank was lynched in Georgia, back in 1915. I hadn’t known that, or even that my sister was a member.

The most surprising thing was how much Ian Cornish loved the commotion. He sat on the edge of my desk and talked to me like we were old friends. “It’s good to ruffle the feathers on those silly hats.”

I said it was a shame that so much had been cut out of the story and he gave me a lecture about how nobody but the writer ever knows what’s missing. He said it happens to everyone. “Even me.”

It took me a minute to realize that the man was flirting with me. “You need thick skin to do this job, which is why the ladies don’t last long. Especially not young ladies with skin as lovely as yours.” And then he asked me out to dinner.

I said no, but he didn’t give up. He went on a flattery campaign. He liked how I had changed the part in my hair. He said my red scarf was “smart.” He complimented something I’d written. “Nice turn of phrase.”

I think I might have said yes to a cup of coffee except for his breath. Some men in the newsroom slurred and staggered in after drinking their way through lunch. Cornish held his liquor better than most, but I knew better than to go near a drunk, even for coffee.

He kept asking me out and I kept saying no until the day he showed me an invitation to the big opening-night party for the Metropolitan Theatre. It was going to be a dress ball, the most extravagant party ever seen in Boston. Serena would have been the natural choice to write it up, but she had disappeared and I knew why: Tessa Thorndike was expecting a baby.

Cornish said that he was thinking of turning the whole page over to a Seen and Heard report on the gala. “I could send you, but you’ve never done anything this big before. I’d be sticking my neck out.”

I thought he was telling me I was going to cover the party, so I started thanking him, promised I’d do a good job and wouldn’t let him down.

He stopped me. “Just a minute, kiddo.” I would have to get the story without tipping anyone off why I was there, so no taking notes. I would have to bone up on who’s who and what’s what. He said, “We can go over it at dinner.”