31 Bond Street

The experience was a far cry from the weathered frame house on Myrtle Avenue near the Naval Yard, where her father reigned over his children with a wooden board from the broken picket fence. He beat her with it when she returned the following day, never asking where she’d been all night. Rigid with determination, Emma brought all her clothes in a canvas bag when she met Mr. Cunningham the next day, and she never went home again.

He put her up in the city, in nice hotels, and soon after, in a house. When Augusta was born, he rented a larger one on Irving Place, and he never failed to pay the rent. He remained with his wife in his large mansion on the Brooklyn side of the river. “Take pity on me,” he would say, “she is sickly,” if Emma tearfully implored him to stay longer after a short visit. His wife was an unseen specter, frail and nervous, that hovered for years until she finally passed away when Augusta was seven and his second child, Helen, a toddler. After a ten-month absence, which Emma took to be a proper mourning period, George reappeared and brought them into his Brooklyn house, a gloomy pile, filled with the odor of dust and decay and room after room of family heirlooms. She became its mistress; it was more like a mausoleum, having encased an invalid for years.

They married quietly. Afterward, George retreated into his study with a tumbler of scotch and rarely emerged. His company, Cunningham & Cunningham, bottled spirits, liquor being the family fortune and its downfall. In a short matter of time, George’s drinking accelerated his own bad health, and he accumulated debts while casks of whiskey remained untended at the wharves. In 1854, he went out west to recoup his fortune and gambled the rest of his inheritance on prospects in San Francisco, returning with less than he started with, the gold rush being mostly over. He caught a feverish ailment there and died of complications from it when he returned, like a plague that claimed those who chased after gold. Her husband’s decline had seemed so fast—as if a demon had foreclosed upon his soul, secretly targeting her as well.

But Harvey Burdell is so solid. He rarely drinks. Emma’s eye was trained casually toward the restaurant window, watching for Dr. Burdell’s arrival. If he came early, she would put on her gloves slowly, smoothing the soft leather on each finger, making him wait. When he did show up, he was twenty minutes late, which sobered her mood like the bitter swig of a root tea. She summoned her gaiety and joined him on the twilit street between the swaying of women’s hoops as the evening traffic thinned on Broadway.

They walked to the theatre, and he told her about his day, which included a difficult dental surgery, a story that lasted halfway to Astor Place. After his story was finished, they sauntered along in silence. After a long pause, Emma ventured to ask softly, “Why is it that you have never married?”

He gazed sternly ahead. “I have no reason to marry,” he answered. “At forty-six, I enjoy my solitary pursuits. I enjoy female companionship, but an independent arrangement suits me best.”

“I do not know what you mean,” she replied coolly, “by an ‘independent arrangement.’”

“Oh, yes you do, my dear,” he said dismissively. “I am not an anxious schoolboy, and you are not an ingenue. You are no doubt aware, at our age, that there is no need to hide behind convention. We can be free of the constraints that society places upon the young. There are many couples, quite prominent in New York, that remain unmarried, retaining their separate residences and who enjoy the physical side of marriage. It is a most sophisticated arrangement.”

The response stung. “I am indeed aware of such independent couples,” Emma said, choosing her words, carefully. “But I would have difficulty with such an arrangement myself. I have my daughters to think of. At their tender age, it is important that my actions stand as an example. They are still young, and I could not steer them toward marriage if I, myself, did not respect the vows.” He wants me, she thought, but is it love? For a moment she felt a twinge of panic, as if he had seen into her past. No, she assured herself, it was more likely that he had a bachelor’s dread of trespass, and she should tread lightly.

“As for your lovely daughters,” he replied, forcing a light tone, “a sensible parent requires only a large bank account to snare a successful suitor. And once that is secured, the job is done.” He laughed, clearly hoping to change the subject.

“It is not so simple as that,” she replied, her voice edging upward. “Even with means, a parent needs to be vigilant. This city provides many traps for young ladies. Many suitors are not what they seem. Some are scoundrels, intent upon a large dowry. A parent must protect a daughter’s interests.”

“If a suitor cared more for the fortune than the bride, he would need to be after a hundred thousand dollars to make it worth his while,” he said, looking at her, to gauge her reaction.

She hesitated, wondering if he thought she was worth that large a sum. She decided it was best not to reply, for he would guess that he had hit the number close to the mark, exposing her wealth and stature.

Dr. Burdell scratched his chin, summing her up. “We were speaking about our own situation. I am preoccupied with important business at the moment and am in no position to marry right away. I cannot press events. I have a large sum of money at stake, which, if all goes as planned, will soon see a most lucrative return.”

“What is the use of money if it comes into conflict with personal happiness?”

“When speaking of your daughters, you have just implied that you consider a successful marriage to be one where money is of utmost importance. I would think you would see fit to dispense with hypocrisy.”

She was startled by his abrupt turn. She was not used to a man who disregarded the dance of courtship, with its delicate art of concealment.

“Perhaps I can make a suggestion,” said Dr. Burdell, more gently now. “There are often solutions when one is not blinded by convention. My housemistress, Mrs. Jones, has just departed, leaving the upper floors of my house vacant. You and your daughters could come and live at 31 Bond Street. I need a refined woman to oversee my home. It is not an uncommon arrangement, and in the eyes of the outside world, it would not compromise your integrity. You and your daughters might find my house most suitable.”

Stunned, Emma was not sure whether to be insulted or pleased. A bachelor sharing the upper part of his house with a widow was not uncommon, although the widow was usually an elderly woman, with thick legs and a sagging jowl. “A housemistress? For pay?” she asked.

“You could have the rooms without rent; in exchange, you would oversee the servants. I could help you with your investments,” he added gently. “I could offer the protection of a fine home, and we might consider the suitability of marriage at a convenient date, possibly by the spring.”

Emma sensed a window opening where previously doors had been shut, and this sounded very much like a marriage proposal, although an unconventional one. Her lease was soon up, and her funds were perilously low, and there were few options she could afford as grand as the house on Bond Street. The term “arrangement” could mean many things. “Bond Street is a very respectable location,” she said carefully. “My daughters are very active, and I should need the parlors to entertain on their behalf.” She hoped to sound skeptical.

“My patients use the parlor as a waiting room during visiting hours, usually in the morning. After that, the rooms would be at your service. You shall consider my offer then?” he asked. He gazed into Emma’s eyes as if he was searching for approval. “I have something to tell you if you can keep a secret,” he added. “I have a great deal of money invested with a group of prominent financiers, even a politician or two. If my interests prevail, my land in New Jersey, which I have spoken about, will be very valuable. I must conclude my business by the end of the year, or nothing will be gained, for there are others with interests in opposition.”

He lifted a curl from her cheek. “If you were to turn over to me, say, a sum of ten thousand dollars, your investment would help to speed the process. I will certainly see that you—no I say ‘we’—shall enjoy the most handsome returns.”

Startled by the sudden request for money, she stalled. “Well, sir, this seems to be a separate issue. As I have told you, I am not interested in land speculation.”

“There is no need to make a hasty decision. However, I would like to invite you on a tour of my land,” he said. “I can assure you that any investment will grow greatly. With my own profits, we might build a larger, more modern home on Fifth Avenue.”

Mrs. Cunningham stopped abruptly. “We’d live on Fifth Avenue?” she asked, then color spread across her face when she realized that he had said “we” and she had automatically assumed possession of their next home.

“Well, why not!” he answered jovially. “Fifth Avenue has the largest lots, and plenty of room to build. Soon enough, we will need a bigger residence.”

They had reached the theatre and they entered, arm in arm. Dr. Burdell encountered acquaintances and patients who nodded in greeting. He proudly made introductions. She knew she appeared attractive at his side. The curtain came up, and the actors marched across the stage spouting Shakespeare, wearing embroidered costumes, and gesturing from the turrets of cardboard castles, but she could barely concentrate on the play. She thought about his offer, and the need to maintain appearances, wary not to make any decision that might compromise her. His enthusiasm for their future plans belied his hesitation toward marriage. Her feminine instinct told her that if she were to move in with him at Bond Street, and show him the satisfaction of an intimate domestic life, they would certainly be married by spring.

The play ended with a blaze of trumpets, and the audience rose to the exits. Samuel, Dr. Burdell’s driver, sat waiting atop his carriage outside the theatre. They got in and drove to her home on Twenty-fourth Street. In front of her house, Dr. Burdell engaged in a parting kiss that was more ardent than the others, and she skillfully edged out of the carriage, leaving him longing for more. A mansion on Fifth Avenue, she thought, would be a brilliant place for weddings.

CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_f5b237d3-4dc6-5cd0-9b6c-5eb12df60d11)

October 1856

Visiting the marshland of New Jersey on an October morning to examine real estate was an activity like going to the opera—a refined form of leisure wrapped tightly in the concept of wealth. Samuel picked her up on Twenty-fourth Street and brought her to the riverbank at the foot of Christopher Street. Emma carried an overnight bag. Samuel would ferry her across the river, and Dr. Burdell would meet her on the other side to give her a tour of his property. He would offer her a piece to buy, and she intended to accept.

After much thought and discussion, she had put aside a sum with which to purchase some land—it was money left by her husband for Augusta’s dowry. Dr. Burdell had convinced her that this land investment would swiftly gain in value. Although she was taking a gamble, she felt assured that the transaction would be successful and would secure a significant gain. Instead of feeling anxious, she felt closer to her goal, as if she were a bird gliding gracefully in circles, high above her prey.

Emma sat on the deck on a canvas chair, settling herself among the crude fittings of the small craft. There were just the two of them on the boat. Samuel steered silently, like a sentinel, his dark skin outlined against the sky at the stern. The boat glided past the dockyards, glassworks, distilleries, and furnaces of Greenwich Village, following the river motion south. The city split away as the river opened into the wide mouth of the harbor, swelling like an upturned silver dish.

They sailed toward New Jersey, into the narrow strait of the Kill van Kull, and the boat seemed lost in miles of grassland. Occasionally Emma looked up from her book, squinting into the blue and green expanse. Miles away, in the distance, a southbound train left a smudge of black against the horizon. The whistle blew, setting off a flock of egrets rising on the wing, thousands of them, spreading across the reeds, like a fluttering cloud.

Emma asked Samuel questions: “How far do the marshes stretch? How far is Newark? Do any roads pass over this land?” Samuel, wary, gazed toward the horizon and answered in monosyllables, only saying what was necessary. Emma kept her hand to her brow, shielding the glare. “Which part is Dr. Burdell’s land? she asked.

Samuel pointed to a promontory of discarded shells on the marsh side of New Jersey, “Past that ridge, it was the Indian’s road,” he said, of a faint white line shimmering into the salt marsh. All along New York harbor were small islands dotted with bone white beaches formed of shells, piled into middens and mysterious mounds. The Indians had used shells as currency, and these ancient shell paths formed bridges and roads through the lowlands, marking a path to the riches they once associated with the sea.

It was from an Indian that Samuel learned everything about the harbor—about the marsh elder, goosefoot, and sunflower, which produce edible seeds, and about the otters and giant bullfrogs, a freakish species that sing before a summer rain. He could have told her about his lazy summer days in a dugout canoe, dipping a bucket into the water, with Katuma, a Lenape, whose ancestors had once ruled this watery kingdom, and who worked the oyster barges. On lazy days, they fished together. Just below the surface was a harbor’s bounty of oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, and whelk that burrow in the sandy waterbeds.

And it was the Indians who had aided him and other runaway slaves through the Maryland swamps when he fled North. Tribes still lived along the fingers of land that jutted into the eastern waterways, and when they encountered a starving Negro fugitive, they fed him, teaching him to catch and roast a duck, and to smear his body with bear grease to ward away the bugs and the smell of the dogs.

Since coming to New York, Samuel had found work at the stables and was hired to drive Dr. Burdell. He spent his days riding papers and satchels up and down the streets of New York, or ferrying him along with other men back and forth across this piece of harbor, all the while hearing mischief wrapped in deeds and schemes that had no place under God’s sun.

“Where does the water end and the solid land begin?” Emma asked, dismayed, looking at the tall reeds and grasses that spread for miles.

“This swamp can swallow a man,” was all he said.

They reached the shore of Elizabeth Port, a tiny hamlet with whitewashed houses and a single church. It was afternoon, and Dr. Burdell was waiting near the dock with a buggy. Samuel drove while Emma and Dr. Burdell surveyed the land. They bounced along a dirt road that bordered the sea, flanked by rich meadows that seemed to lift up out of the swamp with deeply rooted stands of trees. The horse stopped when its hooves began to sink into the sticky mud. Ahead was the watery amorphous vista: a patchwork of meadows and marsh that spread for miles inland where one could see the tips of barns on a far horizon.

“We are dividing the land into lots, one hundred acres each. Each piece starts at the water and runs inland. Where the water is shallow it will be dug deep for docks and berths,” said Dr. Burdell, waving his hand along the salt marshes. “The dredged mud will be poured for higher land and roads. A railroad runs south from Hoboken, crossing this expanse of marsh, before it heads on to Philadelphia.” Emma was glad he did not suggest they get out of the carriage where the mud would be sucking at their shoes. “There are only two lots left,” he said. “You can see the best one from here—it ends at the Bound Creek, a freshwater stream that bisects this part of the marsh.”

Since they were on a rise, she could see the shell mounds and a clear stream starting at Newark Bay, cutting into the marshland, a spiraling creek that made a demarcation going east to west. “Farther up, the Hackensack and the Passaic Rivers converge, so the coal barges pass by here as well.” He spoke with such authority that one would think that all the commerce in the harbor was waiting to berth in this spot where now there were only bugs and spiny creatures and enormous fields of useless grasses, swaying for miles. “Buyers have been discreet in purchasing these lots, but it will soon result in a frenzy of speculation once the builders and financiers come on board.”

“Turn around, and head back,” Dr. Burdell ordered Samuel, directing him to turn back to Elizabeth Port. Samuel was familiar with the route and took little direction. They headed toward the village and stopped before a small wooden building that had a sign for a country notary. Dr. Burdell and Emma stepped inside, and the notary nodded a greeting. Dr. Burdell took papers from a satchel and spread them along a central table. He unrolled a map that had thin lines bisecting the furrows and marshes into rectangular plots. Emma studied the survey, trying to make sense of the markings. Dr. Burdell put his hand on her arm, and she felt his grip tighten as she hesitated. “That is the section I shall choose,” she said, finally, pointing to a dotted line that marked a plot along the water’s edge. She recognized a hook shape on the map that corresponded to a promontory she had seen from the boat ride; from the water it had looked like a bone that was raised out of the water, its dry ridge continuing like a highway through the wetland. The line of the freshwater creek was within its boundary. She hesitated again, and then nodded. “Yes, this is the one I will take.”