Historical Fiction Set In Gilded Age Rhode Island
Gilded Summers (Newport's Gilded Age Book 1) by Donna Russo Morin
Book excerpt
The moment had come. Would I trifle with this girl or truly befriend her? My eyes closed for a moment, my stark vision drawn inward, seeking truth, looking for what was right, what I wanted against the consequences of wanting it. With my words came the answer. No one reveals their dark truths to trivial acquaintances.
“My father is a railroad baron, as so—”
“Bar-ron?” Ginevra said the word strange to her as if it were two.
“A businessman, a very successful businessman, like most of the men who come here in the summer. But he is also a descendant of…” I would have to watch my language, not because of Ginevra's mind, but because of her lack of knowing all the words. “He was born into a great family, with a descent that can be traced back to the Mayflower. They became very rich. But my great-grandfather had somehow—Father has never told me; I think he is ashamed—lost the family fortune. My father earned it back, doubled it. Now he is on both sides of the line.”
Ginevra lifted her shoulders. I scoured the branches above to see if the words I needed sat upon them. In the end, I shrugged and spoke plainly.
“Not a real line, there is a line, among the people, an invisible line, marking where their money came from. Does that make sense?”
“Si,” she rolled her big brown eyes as she nodded. “Mr. Birch, Mrs. Briggs, Chef,” she raised a hand and drew a line in the air, “me and the others.”
“Yes,” I laughed a little. There were all sorts of lines in our lives in those days. Ginevra learned about them quickly. Perhaps there were lines everywhere, even in Italy. All of life seemed a blurry line as I dithered for my dot upon it. “Well, this line is drawn in the roads and in the cottages. On one side, there are the 'Nobs,' people who inherited money, came down in the family. 'Old' money, they call it.”
I looked at her. She nodded, still with me.
“On the other, there are the 'Swells,' people rich now, but not before, people who made their money in business and industry. 'Nouveau riche,' they are called.”
I didn't bother to explain that it had been Mr. McAllister, again, who had made such distinctions, and such distinctions important, who had, somehow, become judge and jury of all. I judged harshly those who judge others. I was too young to see my own contrariness.
“Because my father came from money and made a lot of money, he stands alone in a way, in the middle.”
“It not…it is not easy for him.” I heard tenderness in Ginevra's voice as she summed up her father so well.
I shook my drooping head. “No, it isn't. And she doesn't make it any easier for him.”
“She? Mother?”
I sniffed an ugly little laugh. “Yes, my mother. She is twelve years younger than he is, you know. I think she was his prize for making the family rich again. They met before he went off to serve in the War of Secession.”
“Ah,” Ginevra breathed, “the scars.”
I frowned. “Yes, the scars. They had married when she was only sixteen, but she made sure they were bound together before he left, securing his affections lest he fall for some southern belle. I think she meant to secure his fortune for her own. Her family had had money once, but not very much when they met. She was, is I suppose, one of the great beauties of Society. Beauty is as powerful as money here.”
I stopped for a moment, my mother's words buzzing in my ear, a bee with a harsh stinger, You will have beauty and money, Pearl. You know what Ward says, 'beauty before brains, brains before money.' You will move us even higher up. I didn't care about climbing as she did, save perhaps in this tree.
“Well, she never imagined he would return 'deformed.' Her word, one she bandied, threw at him, cruelly,” I continued. The words rushed from me as if they were in control, not I; to say them was a need I did not know I carried. Here, with Ginevra, they seemed to know better than I, know they were safe. “The scars are shrapnel marks—bullet pieces—dotting his left cheek like stars on a clear night. When he talks to people, he always looks over their left shoulder, showing them mostly the other side of his face. My mother always stays on his right, at the table, standing at social gatherings, or on afternoon strolls, if she stays with him at all.”
This time Ginevra took my hand. “He handsome, manly.”
I stared at a face that I had only just met, yet one I knew. She did not speak words merely to pacify; she said what she thought was true. Gratitude warmed me like the shafts of light sneaking through the leaves. I would feel more of its warmth.
“I think so,” I said with truth. “When I sneak into his study or slip through the dark to climb into his bed for a reassuring cuddle,” my head dropped sheepishly, heat crept up my neck, “I know I'm too old to keep doing it, but he doesn't seem to mind.” I waggled my head as if to waggle away my childishness. “When I do, he is so very generous with them, with his cuddles. I always do so on his left side. I often reach up and touch his scars.” I giggled, head tall upon my straight neck once more. “I remember one time I took a little finger and traced a line, connecting the dots on his face.
“ 'I've made a giraffe, Father,' I remember saying. I remember most his soft smile.”
With a shake, I came back to this place beneath the beeches. I looked at my attentive listener with a sidelong glance. Sympathy etched her face, the chisel one of my own sad making.
“But then he brought her here,” I said, my tone rose as did the tide. “She's better here. It's such a small community. She gets to rub elbows with queens nearly every day.”
Ginevra's face opened, brown eyes flashed and hid as her eyelids opened and closed, open and closed. “Queens? You have queens here? Queen of America?”
I laughed, taking her hand as I saw the hurt my laughter caused her.
“No, no, of course not. Not real queens, only those who think they are. Those women I told you about.”
I picked another fluffy leaf from a nearby branch, picked at its fronds as I tried to explain these people, “The Four Hundred” as the world knew them, to this unworldly girl. How did one explain the three unusual women—rebel, perfectionist, loose cannon—who sat on their thrones, Alva Vanderbilt, Tessie Oelrichs, and Mamie Fish? Of course, the true leader was Mrs. Astor; no one dared rival her decisions. Between the three of them, they could not knock her off the one true throne.
I straightened my back until I was almost bending backward, puffed up my cheeks, stuck my nose in the air, and tightened my throat, “If you want to be fashionable, always be in the company of fashionable people.”
Ginevra laughed a real laugh. It sounded like the seagulls forever wafting above our heads while on this tiny island.
“Who that?”
I laughed too, knowing my imitation was a laughable caricature. “The Mrs. Astor,” I told her through our giggles. “She thinks she really is the Queen of America.”
“But how,” Ginevra struggled. I sat quietly, encouraging her with stillness and a smile. “How these women come to…?”
She was stuck. I helped, but I did so with a bit of a laugh. “Rule?”
“Si, rule,” Ginevra, though she didn't fully understand our language, she understood queens rule, by whatever means, in whatever forms.
It was my turn to pull my shoulders up to my ears. “I really don't know, Ginevra. I haven't figured it out yet.” Oh, how youth misinforms us of our own knowledge. Yet there were things beyond my keen then. I saw them even through my own self-importance. “I only know when they started coming to Newport, when they started building their 'cottages' here, my mother had to have one too. Of course, Mrs. Astor had to approve of our taking a residence here.”
Ginevra gave me that look, one I would come to recognize. She tilted her head to one side, one brow rose on her smooth tawny skin, her mouth puckered as if she'd eaten something bitter.
“Yes, these women rule. They decide who can and who can't have a cottage here.”
“Where do others go?”
I pointed west as if we could see across the harbor. “They have lovely homes in Narragansett, near a long, long, beautiful beach.” I hesitated. I had been to Narragansett once. In some ways, I thought it prettier than Newport, simpler, more elegant and the enormous stretch of beach could have come straight from the Riviera. “If they are ever invited to an event here in Newport, and that is a very big if, they take the ferry over from Narragansett Pier.”
I took a hard look at my cottage, the palace that was my summer home. In comparison to some of the other mansions, it was rather austere, just as much marble but far less glittering gilt. My father's words came back to me, as they did yesterday at dinner, “If you insist we build in Newport, then it shall be where and how I say.”
“I was shocked, almost as much as my mother,” I told Ginevra. “It was one of the few times I had heard him so decidedly firm. Nor did he back down, even when Mother screeched that this plot of land was on the wrong side, on the landside of Bellevue Avenue, not the side perched atop the rocky bluffs, overlooking the Cliff Walk and the sea.
“ 'We shall be a laughingstock,' ” Mother pined with tinny truculence.
“My father grabbed Mother's hand and walked her along the thin dirt path leading left around a thick grove of oaks and maples. On the other side, the trees thinned. A clearing sloped gently away before us, striking for the punctuation of its end by three magnificent beeches, these beeches. Their spindly branches intertwined as if they embraced while others arched and twisted, reaching for the ground, their feathery leaves fluffy as cotton. Even then, I could see the cubbies of space beneath them and longed to enter its haven.
“My father stopped, turned west, and pointed.
“'Look,' he said simply.
“And there it was…the sea my mother craved. Over the tops of the beeches, we saw Newport Harbor.”
Yachts at anchor bobbed on little waves. The orange summer sun dipped down drawing ever closer to the deep blue sea, glowing brighter with each tick of descent. Its glow lit the thin wisps of clouds daring to draw near, turning them to licks of flame.
“In the face of such beauty, my mother became mute.
“I shimmied closer to my father, tucking my small hand in his, smiling when he gave it a squeeze.
“ 'What shall we call it, my Pearl?' ”
“All the cottages have names, Chateau Sur Mer, Marble house, Wakehurst, Rough Point.”
As the lowest tip of the sun slithered beneath the ocean horizon, its tangerine rays struck the beeches, filling the cave-like spaces with light. They glowed as if lit from within. I was captivated.
“'The Beeches,”' I said.
“My father grinned as he does, with a nod and a grunt.
“ 'Beeches,' ” he repeated. 'One might know it for the trees, for we shall write it that way. But others might think it's for the beautiful shore all around us.'
He looked down at me with his somber brown gaze.
“ 'How very clever of you, my Pearl. Well done.' ”
“Though I had not thought of the double meaning of the word, I felt clever nonetheless. I always want my father to think of me as a clever girl, not the kind of girl my mother is.”
“Your mother, she is…snotflea,” Ginevra attempted. I laughed. She said it wrong, but she got it right. I didn't want to speak of my mother. Or Ginevra's mother. They were both absent in our lives, though a different sort of absent. I'm not sure if it made a difference, or which was worse.
“The first thing we need to do is to improve your English,” I announced, then immediately felt sorry for my words. Had I insulted her? It was the last thing I would wish to do to this new friend of mine, for I did feel that we would become friends. We can never know when a similar soul will pass our way, or what sort of dress it may hide behind. My fears fled with her rapid nodding, the spark bursting in her dark eyes.
My taut shoulders dropped; I breathed again. “I think you should start with reading. If you read out loud, it will help when you speak.”
I saw the truth then in the slump of her shoulders and the slow slide of her features lower down her face.
“You don't know how to read, do you?” I asked softly.
“Si, Italian.” She screwed up her shoulders along with her pride.
“Well, that's wonderful,” I praised. She needed me to. “Then I shall teach you to read in English and to write, of course. Would you like that?”
“Yes. Very much.” Her words were simple; her smile was so much more.
“A lush and evocative novel of the Gilded Age period, brought vibrantly to life in this powerful work”
“Remarkable historical fiction”
“Author Donna Russo Morin has a knack for both character and historical authenticity, making this journey into Newport’s Gilded Age a fascinating and fulfilling tale”
Book Details
AUTHOR NAME: Donna Russo Morin
BOOK TITLE: Gilded Summers (Newport's Gilded Age Book 1)
GENRE: Historical Fiction
SUBGENRE: American Historical Fiction
PAGE COUNT: 338
IN THE BLOG: Best Historical Fiction Books
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