RODMAN HALL: CHILDREN’S HOME
Back again on the now deserted top floor of the rooming-house, I turned
once more to the help-wanted column. An advertisement about which Alice
and I had often speculated during the winter caught my eye:
“A philanthropic institution for children is in need of the services of
a gentlewoman. One who prefers the life of a comfortable home with
refined surroundings to a large salary.”
Though well along toward the middle of the day I decided to try my luck.
Calling up an address mentioned in the advertisement, it did not greatly
surprise me to learn that the institution was Rodman House. I had long
been acquainted, through the newspapers, with this institution. In all
these “write-ups” the statement that the children in the home were
surrounded and cared for exclusively by women of education and
refinement was always conspicuously emphasized.
To the wages, fifteen dollars a month, I did not give a second thought.
Having bought a pair of new shoes with some of my earnings at Sutton
House, I felt quite independent of money. To tell the truth so deep was
my sympathy for the class of children cared for in the Rodman Hall, I
would gladly have given my services. Also, I had met Mrs. Howard, who
was the life and soul of the work. Familiar as I was with her long and
persistent struggles to put the institution on a sound financial basis,
I held her in high esteem.
Speaking to her over the telephone, I told her exactly who I was, and
stated honestly my reasons for wishing the position—my sympathy with her
plans, and my desire to be closely associated with the children for the
sake of my work as a writer.
She was even more persistent than Mrs. Bossman in urging me to come at
once—that afternoon. Confident that I had found a place in which it
would be greatly to my advantage to remain the entire summer, I hurried
back to the rooming-house and dived once more into the business of
packing. Such an accumulation! Being the last of those who had spent the
past seven months on the top floor, my neighbors on leaving had
presented me with everything he or she did not think worth while taking
with them, yet considered too good to be thrown away—the Press was
continually cautioning persons against waste of any sort, while every
man, woman, and child throughout the country appeared to be rushing
around gathering all conceivable articles to send to Belgium.
Perhaps my neighbors thought of me as the Belgium of that top floor.
They acted like it.
Mrs. Wilkins gave me a new Panama hat, the brim of which had been cut by
a careless trimmer.
“They was throwin’ it in the trash-box when I seen ’em,” she explained,
on presenting the rescued head-covering to me. “All you have to do is to
line the brim, turn it up on the side or behind or before—whichever way
most becomes you in the face—and fix the trimmin’ so the cut won’t show.
It’ll look as good as a twenty-five-dollar hat when you get through.”
On the strength of having given me such an expensive hat she asked me to
keep her cooking utensils and breadbox. And as an eleventh-hour
reminder, hung her winter coat and furs in my tiny little wardrobe—all
to be kept until she “found time” to send for them.
Alice, of course, left behind all the household equipments gathered by
the two of us. One of her winter hats, being too large to pack in her
trunk, and not considered of sufficient value or becomingness to warrant
a special shipment, also fell to my lot. And along with it a gas-lamp, a
camp-stool, two writing-desk sets, a soiled Indian blanket—all Christmas
presents.
The little organist likewise bequeathed to me a number of Christmas
presents, along with her books and sheet-music too ragged to pack. The
restaurant owner gave me a metal flask containing about a pint of
whiskey, about which he declared: “’Tain’t the kind a man would
drink—not twice if he knew it. But I thought, being a lady, you might
like to have it around.”
Needless to state I thanked him graciously. Just as I did the reporter
when he carted in twenty odd books, a file of daily newspapers, two
sofa-pillows, and a moth-eaten slumber-robe. The books, sofa-pillows and
the robe had been sent him at that season of the year when the world
goes mad on the subject of giving—give wisely if they know how and have
the money, but give they must.
A few days after the newspaperman’s departure a bamboo walking-cane with
a wabbly head, a silk umbrella minus one rib, and a grease-paint outfit
was presented to me by the man in the front skylight room.
“I used to belong to the profession,” he told me, explaining the paints.
“Now that I am a promoter I don’t need it. And this umbrella—one of the
ribs is broken—but it’s silk—heavy silk. I saved it to have it mended.
One of the companies of which I’m a director cut a melon the other day,
so I don’t need to use a mended umbrella.”
As I was still playing the part of Polly Preston my trunks were in
storage. As a first step toward packing my collection of remembrances I
hurried to Third Avenue, and after considerable searching among the
groceries I finally discovered three suitable boxes. Persuasion
supplemented by a one-dollar bill induced the owner to allow his errand
boy to take them to the rooming-house in his hand-cart. Of course the
errand boy got an additional quarter of a dollar.
In the smallest of the three boxes I packed my precious new shoes and
the other articles to be taken to Rodman Hall. But turn and twist and
pound as I might and did, I could not cram all the objects to which I
had fallen heir into the two large boxes. With many explanations I
presented the overflow to Molly, the negro maid. Leaving the house the
next morning I saw them, the box of greasepaint and all the rest, in the
garbage-can at the foot of the front steps.
Evidently Molly had not been receiving private communications from
either Brand Whitlock or Mr. Hoover. How comfortable it must be not to
carry the woes of the world on your shoulders!
After the hot and dusty streets of New York Rodman Hall, reached after a
considerable run by the Subway, seemed a bit of heaven. Seated back from
the country road and among the trees the large house, which was of some
dark shade almost the color of the trunks of the trees, appeared to have
grown there—not built in the usual way. There was no lawn, the trees
were not overlarge and did not impress one as having been carefully
planted or pruned. Like the house they appeared to have just grown there
and to have enjoyed the process.
Even the gravel on the wide driveway that curved from the public road to
the front door had the look of being to that spot born. And though the
dash of color to the left of the house, a little behind, was made by a
crimson rambler, there was no suggestion of the artificial. It was a
comfortably homey place without a suggestion of institution. I
congratulated myself on having found such a place in which to spend the
summer—surrounded by children of the particular class cared for in the
Rodman Hall.
Mrs. Howard received me pleasantly and while showing me over the house
she explained the work and recounted the incident that had led her to
undertake the care of this type of defective children. Though having
read the same thing in the “write-ups” of the Rodman Hall I was pleased
to have it authenticated. Out on the grounds she pointed out, with
considerable pride an adjoining tract of land which she said contained
sixteen acres, and which she had just purchased for the institution.
That afternoon one of the institution’s employees invited me to use her
typewriter to write a letter home, notifying my family of my change of
address. While doing this we carried on quite a conversation. With
considerable gusto she informed me that she had been for years private
secretary to a Mr. Johnson Bascom, a high official of a large banking
corporation. So confidential had been her relations with her chief, she
proudly assured me, that as soon as the “now famous investigation” was
mooted he sent her abroad.
“It’s not every girl that’s spent a year in Europe,” she told me, her
eyes sparkling with pleasure. “And I stopped at the best hotels, too—had
all my expenses paid, and my salary besides.”
“Then you could have given valuable testimony?” I asked.
“I certainly could’ve done that, and they knew it, too,” she boasted.
“You were not afraid to take their money?”
“I should say not. They were not giving me more than my absence was
worth to them. My friends tell me I was a fool not to have made them pay
me more—when you are young you haven’t got much sense. I thought if I
could spend a year abroad I’d be IT.”
“Odd variety of IT to be second in command of an institution for young
children!” was my mental comment, and I turned back to pecking on her
typewriter.
That evening after eight o’clock I passed through the pantry on my way
to the village to mail my letter. The man who was washing dishes, work
that I would have to do the next day, was still hard at work. He told me
that it would be more than an hour before he would finish.
Overtaking one of the attendants also on her way to the village, and
finding her a companionable woman, I joined her. During our walk she
told me that our fellow workers had looked me over, and decided that I
“might” remain two days. That nettled me a bit, and I assured her of my
intention to remain several weeks, perhaps the entire summer.
She inquired if Mrs. Howard had given me the schedule of my work. It so
happened that an assistant had handed me two typed pages just as I was
leaving to mail my letters. Though at first sight it did seem formidable
I felt sure that by a little systematizing it would be well within my
strength. Indeed my faith in Mrs. Howard was such that I resented the
suggestion that she would overtax any worker.
Turning the conversation I soon learned that my companion was the widow
of a well-known college professor. She had been “enticed,” she said, by
an advertisement similar to the one I had answered.
“I did try to be careful,” she assured me, “because giving up the little
I had in the way of a home meant so much to me. Once before I had been
tricked by a woman. This time, to make sure that everything was all
right, I came out to Rodman Hall and talked with Mrs. Howard. The place
is so beautiful and that woman talked so fair I felt sure that I had
found a comfortable home with congenial work for the balance of my
life.” She shook her head, was silent for a few seconds, then added: “If
I could I would leave to-morrow. As it is I’ve just got to stick it out
until I get money enough to pay my way back to the West to my people.”
“But the other women!” I remonstrated, convinced that the woman was
exaggerating conditions. “Surely refined, educated women——”
“Educated!” she scoffed. “Excepting Miss —— (naming the woman with whom
I had talked) I don’t believe a one of them can do more than write her
name. They are all foreigners. Do you know who she is?”
Admitting unwillingly that this woman had told me of having been the
secretary of a man mixed up in some financial scandal, I added:
“But surely you don’t imagine that Mrs. Howard knows.”
“Don’t imagine she knows! I know she knows,” the clergyman’s widow
declared. “That woman is one of Mrs. Howard’s standbys. Being an
educated woman and fairly presentable, Mrs. Howard pushes her forward on
any and all occasions. Did Mrs. Howard introduce you to any of the
nurses?”
I shook my head.
“Of course not. She wants to keep up as long as possible her idea about
the children being cared for by gentlewomen!” The scorn with which she
pronounced gentlewomen! “The nurses are regular Irish biddies, every one
of them.”
Much to my surprise on returning from the village a few minutes before
nine I discovered that the sheets had been taken off my bed. They were
not in the room. As everybody in the house appeared to be asleep and I
did not care to awaken them, sleeping without sheets was my only
alternative. The mattress did not look any too fresh, so I covered it
with my two extra nighties.
My room proved to be a little hot-box. Finally I dozed off and was
suddenly awakened by a mighty banging and beating. The night-watchman
was cleaning up the kitchen, which was next my room, and he informed me
that he had to do it every night between twelve and two. Once he had
finished I again dropped off to sleep.
Another mighty thumping and bumping brought me straight up in bed. The
man who tended the furnace was busy getting it ready for the cook. It
was only a little after four o’clock, but being light out-of-doors I
decided to get up. It was then that I discovered that I was expected, as
a matter of course, to wash my face and do any other bathing of which I
might feel the need, in the kitchen-sink.
“Evidently,” I remarked to myself, “when a gentlewoman meets with
reverses she not only loses her sense of modesty, but her desire to keep
herself clean. What next?”
After sweeping and dusting the piazzas, the parlor, the schoolrooms, the
reception-room, and the stairs, as per schedule, I entered the boys’
dormitory. While downstairs I had heard a voice that seemed to my ears
very like that of Mrs. Howard scolding some one. Now I found her in this
dormitory where three nurses were getting the more helpless of the boys
out of bed and dressing them.
She, Mrs. Howard, reminded me of an ill-tempered dog barking, snarling,
snapping at everything in sight. When I entered the dormitory she left
off nagging the three nurses and turned on me.
“You’re not beginning very well this morning, Miss Porter,” she snarled.
As it had been some little time since I had looked at the clock I did
not know but what I might be a little late in reaching that dormitory.
But I did know that I had been working like a horse since before
five-thirty. Not caring to have words with any one, Mrs. Howard least of
all, I passed on into the adjoining sleeping-porch.
Here I began by picking up the night-clothes of the children who,
already up and out, had dropped them on the floor. This done I opened up
the beds—all of them wet and two of them soiled.
Because of a state law, articles in such a condition cannot be sent to a
laundry—they must first be rinsed and dried. I was just beginning the
unpleasant task of rinsing preparatory to carrying them, mattresses and
bedclothes, to hang on the lines in the back yard, when Mrs. Howard
entered.
“You’re not beginning very well this morning, Miss Porter,” she again
told me, and her tone was unmistakably intended to be insulting.
My respect for Mrs. Howard was sincere. Though I had been at Rodman Hall
less than twenty-four hours I had seen enough to feel convinced that the
children were all well fed, comfortably housed and clothed, and tenderly
mothered. The discomforts of my room and the huge amount of work
scheduled for me were matters of secondary importance. I felt sure that
by a judicious use of patience and tact both would be altered to my
satisfaction. Determined not to be drawn into a dispute with a woman for
whom I had such sincere respect, I held my tongue. But as I continued to
work I couldn’t help wondering what had happened that could make her so
far forget herself.
“Where were you last night?” she demanded, and glancing up I found her
following close at my heels. “You were not in your room at nine o’clock.
I took the sheets off your bed. Where were you?”
A child could have knocked me down, I was so amazed. That Mrs. Howard
should use such an insulting tone when addressing me was enough of a
shock. That she would be guilty of such an act of spiteful tyranny as
taking the sheets off the bed of an employee was unbelievable. I stared
at her, stupidly silent.
“And you’re not beginning so well, now, are you?” she repeated a third
time, and if possible her tone was even more insultingly taunting.
That loosened my tongue.
“I may not have begun so well, Mrs. Howard,” I told her as I unbuttoned
my apron. “But I shall improve as I go along.”
Having taken off my apron I handed it to her.
“What is this for?” she demanded, staring at the apron. “What do you
mean by this?”
“It means that you are to send me to the nearest railroad-station, and
at once.”
Then I told her what I thought of her, and my words came straight from
the shoulder. I reminded her that she had hired me as a gentlewoman, yet
she had not provided me a place in which I could so much as bathe in
privacy. If she had not sufficient money to pay decent wages to workers,
I asked why she had bought that additional ten acres of land. I reminded
her that she already had more land than could be used by the class of
children cared for at Rodman Hall.
Furthermore, I told her that if ever I saw her advertisement, similar to
the one by which she had trapped the professor’s widow and myself, I
would go to see the owner of the newspaper in which it appeared. I would
show the schedule of work she had mapped out for me, tell him of other
women whom she had decoyed, and ask why he published the advertisements
of such fakers.
It was then that Mrs. Howard did everything except offer bodily violence
to induce me to return that schedule.
On returning to New York I took the schedule at once to a reputable
agency for domestic servants. Pretending that I was acting in behalf of
a friend who lived in the country, I showed the two typed pages to the
manager, and asked for a maid who would do that work for fifteen dollars
a month. The manager glared at me. She assured me that it was impossible
for one woman to do so much work even in a twenty-four-hour day. She
didn’t exactly show me the door, but the manner in which she looked at
it was pointed.
At the next agency the manager was more polite. She advised me to induce
my friend to get three girls. Even then, she explained, my friend would
have to pay the girls at least twenty dollars a month each.
“We don’t have as many greenhorns coming over as we used to,” she told
me, “and even those we do have demand more money. Twenty dollars a month
is very little these days even for the poorest servant.”
The woman in charge at the next agency brusquely informed me that she
had too much respect for herself to offer such a job to any girl, even
the most ignorant immigrant. My friend, she added, should be forced to
do all that work herself, then she might understand why she couldn’t get
a girl.
At the fifth agency I was treated as a half-witted creature to whom the
manager was forced by her own self-respect to be polite. Evidently, she
told me, I had no experience with housework. Otherwise I would know that
it would be impossible for a human being, man or woman, however skilled,
to accomplish so much work in one day. If my friend’s home was near a
popular beach, or offered an equally desirable summer attraction, she
might get me two women. Wages? Thirty-five dollars a month each, perhaps
more.
Determined to give Mrs. Howard a square deal I called on my Y. W. C. A.
friend. After reading the advertisement and the schedule, she computed
the beds in the four dormitories and their sleeping-porches.
“Forty-two beds!” she exclaimed. “Why making forty-two beds is a day’s
work, a hard day’s work in itself. A hotel chambermaid seldom has more
than twenty-five beds.”
When I explained that most of these beds were always wet, many of them
always soiled, her surprise became indignation.
“That woman is worse than any slave-driver!” she exclaimed. “Oh, yes,
she is! The idea of expecting any woman to care for forty-two such beds,
carry the bedclothes and mattresses down two flights of stairs and hang
them on lines in the back yard to dry. When they do dry you must cart
them back again and make the beds. Something should be done to that
woman. I wish the law could reach her.”
Again turning to the schedule she read to the end of the two closely
typed legal-cap pages.
“Besides caring for the dormitories and sleeping-porches, you had to
sweep and dust two piazzas, the parlor, reception-room, two schoolrooms,
and two flights of stairs—beating all rugs in the back yard once a week,
or as often as necessary.” She glanced up at me and shook her head, then
went back to the typed sheets. “You were to help serve all three meals,
wash the dinner dishes, and keep the pantries in order.”
“In short, I was to have been parlor-maid, dining-room girl,
pantry-maid, and chambermaid—a sort of four in one person,” I agreed.
“If only I had——”
“This is no laughing matter,” she reproved me sharply. “The reduced
gentlewoman is one of the most serious problems the Association has to
deal with—how to help her help herself, how to make her decently
self-supporting. Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred such women are as
ignorant and trustful as a baby. That is why Mrs. Howard’s
advertisements are so dangerous. You must give that woman a lesson that
she will not forget soon.”
Surprised by her vehemence, I turned and looked at her.
“You must do it,” she repeated, her tone and manner both serious.
“But how?” I exclaimed, then reminded her: “I threatened to expose her
to the newspaper if ever I saw her advertisement again. That’s all I can
do.”
“No, it is not,” she contradicted. “You can make her reimburse you for
every penny that trip cost you—your packing and moving your things to
storage. Every penny. That’s the only way to touch a woman of her
type—through her pocketbook. She has no heart. She doesn’t care a rap
for those children except as a means unto her end—to glorify herself.
She intends that institution to be her monument. She will wring or
squeeze every dollar she can from every person she can in order to add
one stone to that monument. You can help the Association—we are always
coming up against such women. It is your duty to do all you can to
prevent other women falling into her trap.”
Because I could not agree with my friend—her estimate of Mrs. Howard—I
promised to sleep on her advice and let her know what I finally decided
to do.
Mrs. Howard, as I then saw her, had a single-track mind—a disease more
common than is generally admitted. Absorbed by Rodman Hall she had
thought of no other subject, had no other interest for so long that her
mind had got into a groove, just one groove. She could not see, much
less realize, anything outside that groove, neither to the side of it,
above it, nor below it. The interest of Rodman Hall and that alone was
considered.
When, after sleeping on it for several nights, I finally decided to
follow my friend’s advice, I felt sure Mrs. Howard would refuse to
reimburse me. I itemized the expenditures. She would write me that she
was in no way responsible for my having to buy three boxes, nor for my
paying a twenty-five-cent tip. The amount I had paid for the cartage and
storage of my goods, she would insist, I felt sure, was none of her
business. She would protest that her advertisement was in good faith,
and as she had already paid the wages due me for two days, and my
railroad ticket to and from New York, she would pay me no more.
Tuesday morning, my second day in the loan department of the T. Z. Trust
Company, as I was leaving the rooming-house I met the postman on the
steps, and he handed me Mrs. Howard’s reply. That reply now lies before
me. It is written in long hand on the official paper of Rodman Hall. In
the copy that follows only the proper names have been changed.
“Rodman Hall, June 25, 1917.
“DEAR MISS PORTER:
“I agree with you that I made a mistake in trying to give this work to a
gentlewoman. It will never turn out as I had hoped it would. Almost
every day some one comes to me for help and the only work I have I
offer.
“Dormitory work and dish-washing, it is true, is not what gentlewomen
would select as a general thing to do, yet if one should decide to do it
rather than be out of work, I feel sure the duties would be well
performed.
“I am writing Mrs. Jones, the assistant secretary, to send you a check
for $4.37.
Yours truly,
W. C. HOWARD.”
On the Subway on my way down town again I gave this letter its first
reading. It not only greatly surprised me, but it greatly puzzled me. On
rereading it an exclamation burst from my lips.
Any one reading her letter would imagine that I had complained of the
character of the work assigned me—dormitory work and dish-washing. Also,
that out of work I had appealed to her for help. If she received appeals
for help “almost every day,” why was it necessary for her to advertise
in the help-wanted columns? During that winter and spring Alice and I
had noticed her advertisement fully one dozen times.
Some day I shall frame this letter of Mrs. Howard’s together with her
advertisement and the two typewritten pages of legal foolscap, the
schedule of work.