FLOSSIE STARBUCK ASPIRES.
There was a time when Mrs. Gower was not fashionable. It is necessary,
for our purpose, to go back to these dark ages. Her maidenhood was
passed in unobtrusive splendor behind a frowning brown-stone front on
a cross-street only two doors from Fifth Avenue. This house was one of
a thousand: nine hundred and ninety-nine other New York houses were
just like it. Here old Silas Starbuck for his twenty last years, led an
even life, torpid in his undigested gold. Here Miss Florence pressed
her girlish nose against the window-pane to stare at the opposite
houses and wonder who the inmates were, and whether their lives were
like to hers; or she strained her large eyes sideways to reach the
perspective of morning ash-barrels, reaching in either direction to the
avenue beyond. She did not then even know that brown-stone fronts were
expensive, when she looked and speculated so wearily upon them.
A little later she began to speculate upon the people in them, and
wonder more particularly about them, as she saw them, when coming from
church, meet each other on the avenue and bow. No one ever bowed
to them; though sometimes an oldish man would stop and speak to her
father. It was at this time that it occurred to her to read books; and
she became romantic, and would dream, after the manner of democratic
maidens, of some courtly suitor, some young prince, who would fall in
love with her, and give her rare old family jewels and take her to
court balls.
This era lasted but a short time with Florence Starbuck, for she was
very clever and sensible, even as a girl. She soon learned to fix
her ambitions on possible things. And, indeed, she had no envy for
the impossible. She soon learned to covet only those goods which
her neighbors possessed, according to our practical version of the
commandment, that “thou shalt not hanker after the ideal.” There was a
certain clumsy accord of motive between old Starbuck and his daughter,
but he was far from appreciating her refinement of desire, or fancying
what high things went on in his daughter’s pretty head when the weekly
“Home” paper dropped from her idle hands, and she sat knitting her
virginal white brow for longing of the world. He had really only
known himself to be rich a short time; and the brown façade which
kept him from the fashionable street still seemed to him the acme of
earthly ambition, as the printed list of charitable benefactors did of
heavenly. Wealth had come very suddenly when it did come; and he felt
it hard that his wife, of whom he had been fond in a certain way, had
not lived to enjoy it. He had married her in old New Bedford days; and
she had died, shortly after Florence’s birth, in the New York house.
Mrs. Gower often thought, with something like a shudder, of what she
might have been, had her mother lived. Mrs. Gower, like most of us, had
thoughts that she admitted to others, thoughts she admitted to herself,
and thoughts she admitted to no one, not even herself; and this was
one of the last.--Do not think her hard-hearted; she is, with all her
faults, one of the best-hearted people in the world, for one so clever.
Satisfy her ambition, and she is good-nature itself; and she hates to
do an ill-natured thing, even to her enemies. Florence, by the way, was
a name she owed to the mercy of her mother; old Starbuck would have
called her Nancy, as he had called her brother, Silas. Fortunately, in
his case, Mrs. Starbuck got in the Howland from a maternal grandfather;
and he is now S. Howland Starbuck, Esq., in the advertisements of
companies--Mr. Howland Starbuck on his card.
Of course Flossie went to a fashionable school on Fifth Avenue, where
she chose her friends judiciously, and it was at this time that she
began to read books. She derived much profit from books, and has always
owed much to them; even now she reads a little, as an old habit not
quite outgrown. I don’t know what it was fired her maidenly ambition;
“Lucille” had not been written then, nor Ouida’s works, but I doubt
there was something similar. And it was certainly books that gave her
her first inkling of a _beau monde_. She used to be very generous among
the girls, her schoolmates, but never sought to take the lead among
them, and was only known as a rather nice little thing from Eighteenth
Street. She never even tried to make their brothers’ acquaintance,
which was duly ascribed on their part to her proper sense of the
fitness of things. The brothers were more interested in her. Once she
was asked to spend a week’s vacation with Miss Brevier; but she never
invited any of her school friends to her own house. If she had not been
so clever, she might almost have become popular. As you see, Flossie
learned much at school; but she took away more, and most of all she had
carried thither with her.
In her maiden meditation, Miss Starbuck gave much and serious thought
to what could be done with her father and brother. Silas, Jr., was a
big, large-boned fellow with a heavy jaw; thick as to legs and head;
in whom the family traits came out with peculiar coarseness, much as
when you raise a mullein in a garden. The effect of wealth had been
to produce him with greater luxuriance and less pruning, in more size
and even coarser fibre. However false may be this analogy, there is no
doubt that his brave old uncle, who had struggled with famine and the
setting ice in Arctic seas, belonged to a much finer type of manhood.
Fortunately, as Miss Flossie reflected, there were no ethics in the
question. Fashion asks no awkward questions. Style, in the year 1868,
in New York, of all the cardinal virtues, was perhaps the easiest to
attain. They had the money--if she could screw it out of Mr. Starbuck.
There, however, came the first difficulty. Not that Mr. Starbuck did
not fully sympathize with her aims, so far as he understood them; but
it was difficult to make him understand them all. She soared in higher
circles. For, remember, Flossie, like most New England girls, had a
natural refinement of her own. And she was very pretty--_petite_ in
figure, then, with a most delicious little face, a face with a thousand
lights and no definite expression. Her eyes though--her eyes were
expressive; there was an archness, a directness, and a certain dewy
softness.--Flossie soon learned that she must be careful of her eyes,
and only use them on great occasions. It was one of her many studies,
out of school, how to make them look demure; particularly before
older women--older women, stout in figure, who would set their heads
back on their comfortable shoulders and gaze at her, through double
eye-glasses, with the liberty of age.--At such times Flossie used to
drop a sort of curtain over those eyes of hers and look straight before
her. She was secretly afraid of these older ladies; and this helped
her, for she really became embarrassed.
But to return to Mr. Starbuck. He was willing to live in an expensive
street, and even to keep a costly carriage, in an expensive stable,
with a cobble-stone court-yard, at eight dollars the cobble-stone,
and put his name in three figures on subscription-papers; but there
his liberality stopped. This was all very well; and Flossie used the
carriage to go to Stewart’s and shop, and, on rainy “Sabbaths,” for the
church. But old Starbuck, who spent the income of a hundred thousand
in façade, would have thought himself a Sardanapalus if seventy-five
cents a day had gone for a pint of claret. Frequently they even dined
without soup; and all wines, in old Starbuck’s mind, were grouped
under the generic name of Rum. Mr. Starbuck had no æsthetic objection
to rum--rather the contrary--but he thought it not respectable, and
kept his tastes in that direction as a private sin. On days when
the minister dined with them a decanter of pale sherry was brought
out--a species of rum sanctified, as it were, by church use, and not
expensive. Mr. Starbuck’s evenings were devoted to slippers and snores.
Certainly, no poor girl had ever more unpromising material to work on.
Flossie felt that, at best, her father could be little more than a base
of supplies; she could never use him for attack.
Improbable as it might seem, Miss Starbuck decided that her social
salvation rested with her unlikely brother Silas. The discovery of the
possible use of so clumsy an instrument, at her age, must be reckoned a
master-stroke. An awkward school-boy, he had met certain other youths
whom Flossie felt she would like to know; with some of them had gone
skating or played games in the streets. Flossie encouraged her father
to give him plenty of pocket-money; he was only a year older than she,
and she might be expected partially to fill her mother’s place. It was
to her that he owed his horse and buggy; this was before the days of
dog-carts. Sometimes he would bring his friends home in the evening;
she would discourage their coming to dinner, but would throw her
influence with his to favor anything that could be reasonably accorded
at other times; and Flossie would excuse it to her father when they
stayed a little late, or would shut the doors between Si’s upper-floor
room and the library when they made too much noise. Sometimes, when
Si lost too much at vingt-et-un, he borrowed of his sister; and she
was not so much shocked as old Starbuck would have been. She knew that
young men would be young men, and that Si must make friends, if at all,
by his pleasant social vices rather than his father’s business virtues.
This sounds cynical; but she did not reason it out in such bald,
unpleasant analysis--it all came from delicate feminine intuition,
of which she had more than her share. She was a quick-witted girl,
living in a great city, with nothing at home to attract her. What else
could she think about? Her vision went no farther than her brown-stone
horizon. She was not romantic; her intellect quite overbalanced her
emotional nature. And she had no Browning societies, and had never read
Emerson nor Ruskin.
At nineteen she had been out of school a year, but had no definite
launching in society. She looked much younger, being as immature in
person as she was the contrary in mind. She saw hardly anyone except
her school-girl friends, with two or three of whom she still remained
intimate; they were kind to her, in a patronizing way, and invited her
to their own parties; sometimes they would even send for her, at the
last moment, to fill a vacant place at a dinner. A few of her friends’
brothers, and all of her brother’s friends, had been attracted by her;
none of them knew her well, but they were in the habit of joking about
her when alone. Most of her friends’ brothers took little interest
in her, and thought her slow. But then (said their sisters) she has
seen so little of the world, poor thing! Flossie felt this, too; but,
as her friends said, she was an unselfish little creature, and her
mind was chiefly occupied with a sisterly solicitude for brother’s
future. She would have liked him to go to college; but he did not
share his sister’s wishes, and the father utterly disapproved of it.
He considered the college-bred man, when successfully perfected, as
a pretty poor article; and college itself as a place where young men
learned to drink and smoke, and spent their money in buggy-hire and
billiards, unbeknown to their fathers. He insisted on Si’s going into
the office; and Si, having finished school, did in fact spend a portion
of his mornings in that nursery of millions, his afternoons in the
park or elsewhere, and his evenings over cards or at Academy balls, or
elsewhere again, all unbeknown to his father. It was at this time that
Si picked up that fine knowledge of life which fitted him, as a man of
the world, to take, afterward, so prominent a position in society.
There is no unlucky accident which an adroit person may not turn
to happy advantage. Si might never have been a success in literary
circles; but he began to develop quite a popularity among young men
of a very good set. At this time it was by no means necessary for a
New York fashionable to be liberally educated. And young Starbuck had
several valuable accomplishments--he was a good whip, and soon became a
tolerable ’vet and knew every jockey on the road; he played a capital
hand at poker, and told stories and talked slang with a certain
pungent humor of his own; and he could even thrum an accompaniment on
a banjo. He was blessed with perfect health, large appetites, plenty
of money; sparred well; was both stupid and good-natured, and had all
the other elements of greatness. Fortunately, Flossie had no very clear
idea of what Si did with his friends; and, secretly, her respect for
him rose when he came home late at night and the next morning talked
familiarly of the Duvals, and Lucie Gower, and “Van.” (“Van” was Mr.
Killian van Kull, of the Columbian and Piccadilly clubs.) It was at
this period that Si, thanks partly to the intercession of his sister
attained to the ownership of a latch-key, and began to come home very
late indeed, and talk mysteriously of French balls. Flossie had a very
vague notion what these might be; and old Starbuck was not over-strict
on that score. He would have thought wine-bibbing infinitely worse,
and cards a shade more heinous than either. And, in fact, he was not
insensible to Si’s social successes. True, old Starbuck was on the same
board of directors with T. L. Gower, Sr., and one of his co-trustees
in a charity; but he secretly felt--all democrat in a democracy that
he was--he secretly felt it a much greater triumph in his career that
young Gower and his son should get drunk together. This is a coarse way
of putting it; let us hasten through the beginnings of things and get
out where we may see the stars once more.