Do you realize what you’re doing, you vociferous criers-out in the cause of humanity, you members of the Lafayette League and other mushy beldames who make themselves party to the murder of mothers and infants?
The outrage of it! I found Miss Sloane already seated at the typewriter, brow furrowed as she clicked away in angry strikes. She was, no doubt, already composing a measured response for the newspaper, but I was in no mood to be measured.
“Oh, dear,” said Emily, glancing up in alarm. “A new hat—”
“Beldames?” I waved the leaflet under her nose. “They’re calling us ugly old witches!”
I wouldn’t let them get away with it. I was, after all, only thirty years old. Or at least close enough to thirty that no reasonable person should quibble over an extra year or four. Thanks to the magic of corsets, rouge, and other hat tricks, men still stumbled over themselves in my presence. I was no beldame. While I seethed, Miss Sloane raised a pointed elfin eyebrow. “I should rather have thought the accusation that we’re a party to murder would offend you.”
I waved a gloved hand. “Well, that goes without saying.”
Since Miss Sloane and I had returned from war-torn France, our charity work had forged us in a true friendship; this despite the fact we had very little in common other than a determination that we must do something about this disastrous war. And the audacity to believe that we could.
Our charity had packaged and shipped more than ten thousand kits filled with underwear, socks, and letters of encouragement for French soldiers in the trenches. Soldiers like my nephew Victor. Soldiers who were defending the children I’d seen at the train station in Amiens.
Together Miss Sloane and I had marshaled New York high society such that our offices were overrun most days with Astor ladies in fine lace gloves and Vanderbilt wives in prim shirtwaists, all eager to assemble care packages. We collected donations nationwide, and for our pains, we now stood accused of “equipping” foreign soldiers with dangerous shipments of socks and underpants.
This latest leaflet was the boldest accusation yet. We’d received dire warnings, even from friends, that we must cease, but this was the most like myself I’d felt in years.
Emily pulled the page from her typewriter to show me.
In answer to the criticism that our Lafayette Fund violates neutrality, our purpose is purely humanitarian: We are trying to relieve the intense suffering at the front. We send comfort kits to France because of the debt we, and all other Americans, owe to that country for her assistance, without which we might never have won our independence.
“Very good,” I said, flicking the page aside and leaving her to catch it out of the air. “But this attack merits more than another politely worded editorial in the New York Times.”
She eyed me—and my hat. “I fear to ask . . .”
“They’re trying to intimidate us because we’re ladies.” Just that morning, women’s suffrage had been voted down in the House of Representatives for the second time, and as I peeked out the window in the direction of the Woolworth Building—the tallest building in the world at sixty stories—I felt in a foul enough mood to knock it down. “Do you think they’d fling insults like that at gentlemen? They wouldn’t dare. It might provoke a duel, even in these modern times. It’s because we’re women that they think we’re soft.”
“Mushy,” Emily corrected, which incensed me all over again.
“They think we’ll scurry off and hide our heads.”
Emily clutched her typewritten words. “Writing an editorial for the New York Times is scarcely hiding!”
“No, but some will take your justification for an apology. And we’re not sorry, are we, Miss Sloane?”
“Certainly not,” she said stoutly.
She was a very stouthearted girl.
With renewed determination, I pulled off my gloves, readying for a fight. “We’re going to redouble our efforts. We’re going to be brazen, doing what New Yorkers do best. We’re going to put on a show!”
“What an engaging idea,” she said.
She did not sound engaged.
Because she’d been struggling with the logistical nightmare of how to ship seven thousand more comfort kits to France over an increasingly perilous sea, I forgave her obvious assumption that I was up to something frivolous. I knew what people said about me—what they’d been saying since the first time I had the nerve to take an interest in political matters. She’s just an empty-headed comedic actress who married above herself and should stick to what she knows.