No, it was the other two women who held my attention. Lady Amelia Beaumont spoke with an uptown New York accent despite the European roots suggested by her title. My estimate put her somewhere in her mid-thirties. Where the Spooner sisters wore their pleats and flounces and tufts of lace, Lady Amelia was sleek and tailored with a minimum of fuss, but in fabrics even I could see were of the very finest quality to be had. Burnished green silk hugged her figure in the very latest, almost scandalous fashion, outlining her bosom, hips, and thighs before spilling away in voluminous folds to a trailing hemline; gold embroidery embellished the cuffs and collar, echoing the brightness of the golden curls piled high on her head. A tiny chapeau sporting a glittering emerald and a shiny green feather completed the outfit.
I noticed Consuelo eyeing this woman with a gleam of envy; we both knew her mother would see Consuelo dead before she’d allow her to wear such a daring ensemble.
Our attention was next drawn to the elderly woman sitting at the far side of the linen-covered table. “And this is Mrs. Calvin Stanford,” Aunt Alva said. “Or Mrs. Hope Stanford, I should say, shouldn’t I, Hope, dear?”
“Indeed,” the woman shot back in a no-nonsense sort of way. “I might be married, but I am still my own person.”
There was little to envy about Hope Stanford’s person. I guessed her age to be somewhere around seventy. She wore her white, wispy hair pulled back in a simple bun beneath a straw boater-style hat that might have been sat upon a time or two; her eyes looked sunken above her prominent cheeks, her nose was long and her mouth thin, and her serviceable cotton day dress displayed nothing of the latest fashions, might have been a year or a decade old; the garment hung limply on a frame one might almost call gaunt. And yet, upon hearing her name, both Consuelo and I gasped.
“The Mrs. Hope Stanford?” I whispered reverently.
“In the flesh, missy,” the woman replied with a force that belied her frail appearance. “I take it you’ve heard of me? Are you a supporter of women’s suffrage?”
“I-I . . .” I nodded rapidly several times. “My aunt Sadie was a huge admirer of yours, Mrs. Stanford. Huge,” I repeated stupidly. I was aware of Consuelo staring at me, her mouth open. “She even wrote to you right after you went before the Rhode Island legislature. You might not remember her letter, but—”
“Does she support the temperance movement?” Mrs. Stanford brusquely asked.
“Oh, well, Aunt Sadie passed away a year ago, but ah . . .” Now that I thought about it, this had been a point of contention between Aunt Sadie and many of her friends who supported the suffrage movement.
“A woman’s right to vote is surely not an end in and of itself, young lady.” Mrs. Stanford sent an angry glare around the table, as if any of the small group had dared to argue with her. “We have a moral obligation to see that alcoholic spirits are prohibited in these United States before they rip our society apart at the seams.”
“Yes, I . . . I see.” Aunt Sadie had never been averse to a glass of wine or sherry in the evening. And then there was dear Nanny, who claimed those wee splashes of whiskey in her tea—and occasionally in mine—were for medicinal purposes only.
I mentioned neither to Mrs. Stanford.
“Well, well,” Aunt Alva interrupted. “Isn’t this lovely. Emmaline, Consuelo, sit and have some tea, dears. The surprise should be here any moment.”
I realized, too, that under normal circumstances Aunt Alva might have served tiny glasses of chocolate or cherry cordial to her afternoon guests, but today there were no crystal decanters in sight. Did that mean Aunt Alva favored prohibition? I doubted it. And I wondered if her sudden interest in women’s suffrage was simply a way to mortify her ex-husband and the rest of the Vanderbilt family.
As Consuelo and I took our places, the other ladies continued conversing. The sudden rise of Mrs. Stanford’s voice drew my attention. “And so I walked into that tavern last night,” she was saying, “the one near the corner of Long Wharf and Thames Street, and I pounded away at the bar top with my sledgehammer.”
Lady Amelia plucked a fan off the table and snapped it open. “You walked in with a sledgehammer and no one stopped you?”
“I don’t believe they quite knew what to make of it,” the older woman replied with a chuckle, “until I started hammering.”
“Didn’t a shout go up for the police?” This came from one of the Spooner sisters. Roberta, I think, the more square-jawed of the two.
“Yes, and where was your husband at the time?” the other sister asked. She looked scandalized, and as if she could use a flutter or two of Lady Amelia’s fan. “Didn’t he go to town with you? Surely he can’t have been in favor of you—”