31 Bond Street. Ellen Horan
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he added gently. “I could offer the protection of a fine home, and we might consider the suitability of marriage at a convenient date, possibly by the spring.”
Emma sensed a window opening where previously doors had been shut, and this sounded very much like a marriage proposal, although an unconventional one. Her lease was soon up, and her funds were perilously low, and there were few options she could afford as grand as the house on Bond Street. The term “arrangement” could mean many things. “Bond Street is a very respectable location,” she said carefully. “My daughters are very active, and I should need the parlors to entertain on their behalf.” She hoped to sound skeptical.
“My patients use the parlor as a waiting room during visiting hours, usually in the morning. After that, the rooms would be at your service. You shall consider my offer then?” he asked. He gazed into Emma’s eyes as if he was searching for approval. “I have something to tell you if you can keep a secret,” he added. “I have a great deal of money invested with a group of prominent financiers, even a politician or two. If my interests prevail, my land in New Jersey, which I have spoken about, will be very valuable. I must conclude my business by the end of the year, or nothing will be gained, for there are others with interests in opposition.”
He lifted a curl from her cheek. “If you were to turn over to me, say, a sum of ten thousand dollars, your investment would help to speed the process. I will certainly see that you—no I say ‘we’—shall enjoy the most handsome returns.”
Startled by the sudden request for money, she stalled. “Well, sir, this seems to be a separate issue. As I have told you, I am not interested in land speculation.”
“There is no need to make a hasty decision. However, I would like to invite you on a tour of my land,” he said. “I can assure you that any investment will grow greatly. With my own profits, we might build a larger, more modern home on Fifth Avenue.”
Mrs. Cunningham stopped abruptly. “We’d live on Fifth Avenue?” she asked, then color spread across her face when she realized that he had said “we” and she had automatically assumed possession of their next home.
“Well, why not!” he answered jovially. “Fifth Avenue has the largest lots, and plenty of room to build. Soon enough, we will need a bigger residence.”
They had reached the theatre and they entered, arm in arm. Dr. Burdell encountered acquaintances and patients who nodded in greeting. He proudly made introductions. She knew she appeared attractive at his side. The curtain came up, and the actors marched across the stage spouting Shakespeare, wearing embroidered costumes, and gesturing from the turrets of cardboard castles, but she could barely concentrate on the play. She thought about his offer, and the need to maintain appearances, wary not to make any decision that might compromise her. His enthusiasm for their future plans belied his hesitation toward marriage. Her feminine instinct told her that if she were to move in with him at Bond Street, and show him the satisfaction of an intimate domestic life, they would certainly be married by spring.
The play ended with a blaze of trumpets, and the audience rose to the exits. Samuel, Dr. Burdell’s driver, sat waiting atop his carriage outside the theatre. They got in and drove to her home on Twenty-fourth Street. In front of her house, Dr. Burdell engaged in a parting kiss that was more ardent than the others, and she skillfully edged out of the carriage, leaving him longing for more. A mansion on Fifth Avenue, she thought, would be a brilliant place for weddings.
October 1856
Visiting the marshland of New Jersey on an October morning to examine real estate was an activity like going to the opera—a refined form of leisure wrapped tightly in the concept of wealth. Samuel picked her up on Twenty-fourth Street and brought her to the riverbank at the foot of Christopher Street. Emma carried an overnight bag. Samuel would ferry her across the river, and Dr. Burdell would meet her on the other side to give her a tour of his property. He would offer her a piece to buy, and she intended to accept.
After much thought and discussion, she had put aside a sum with which to purchase some land—it was money left by her husband for Augusta’s dowry. Dr. Burdell had convinced her that this land investment would swiftly gain in value. Although she was taking a gamble, she felt assured that the transaction would be successful and would secure a significant gain. Instead of feeling anxious, she felt closer to her goal, as if she were a bird gliding gracefully in circles, high above her prey.
Emma sat on the deck on a canvas chair, settling herself among the crude fittings of the small craft. There were just the two of them on the boat. Samuel steered silently, like a sentinel, his dark skin outlined against the sky at the stern. The boat glided past the dockyards, glassworks, distilleries, and furnaces of Greenwich Village, following the river motion south. The city split away as the river opened into the wide mouth of the harbor, swelling like an upturned silver dish.
They sailed toward New Jersey, into the narrow strait of the Kill van Kull, and the boat seemed lost in miles of grassland. Occasionally Emma looked up from her book, squinting into the blue and green expanse. Miles away, in the distance, a southbound train left a smudge of black against the horizon. The whistle blew, setting off a flock of egrets rising on the wing, thousands of them, spreading across the reeds, like a fluttering cloud.
Emma asked Samuel questions: “How far do the marshes stretch? How far is Newark? Do any roads pass over this land?” Samuel, wary, gazed toward the horizon and answered in monosyllables, only saying what was necessary. Emma kept her hand to her brow, shielding the glare. “Which part is Dr. Burdell’s land? she asked.
Samuel pointed to a promontory of discarded shells on the marsh side of New Jersey, “Past that ridge, it was the Indian’s road,” he said, of a faint white line shimmering into the salt marsh. All along New York harbor were small islands dotted with bone white beaches formed of shells, piled into middens and mysterious mounds. The Indians had used shells as currency, and these ancient shell paths formed bridges and roads through the lowlands, marking a path to the riches they once associated with the sea.
It was from an Indian that Samuel learned everything about the harbor—about the marsh elder, goosefoot, and sunflower, which produce edible seeds, and about the otters and giant bullfrogs, a freakish species that sing before a summer rain. He could have told her about his lazy summer days in a dugout canoe, dipping a bucket into the water, with Katuma, a Lenape, whose ancestors had once ruled this watery kingdom, and who worked the oyster barges. On lazy days, they fished together. Just below the surface was a harbor’s bounty of oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, and whelk that burrow in the sandy waterbeds.
And it was the Indians who had aided him and other runaway slaves through the Maryland swamps when he fled North. Tribes still lived along the fingers of land that jutted into the eastern waterways, and when they encountered a starving Negro fugitive, they fed him, teaching him to catch and roast a duck, and to smear his body with bear grease to ward away the bugs and the smell of the dogs.
Since coming to New York, Samuel had found work at the stables and was hired to drive Dr. Burdell. He spent his days riding papers and satchels up and down the streets of New York, or ferrying him along with other men back and forth across this piece of harbor, all the while hearing mischief wrapped in deeds and schemes that had no place under God’s sun.
“Where does the water end and the solid land begin?” Emma asked, dismayed, looking at the tall reeds and grasses that spread for miles.
“This swamp can swallow a man,” was all he said.
They reached the shore of Elizabeth Port, a tiny hamlet with whitewashed houses and a single church. It was afternoon, and Dr. Burdell was waiting near the dock with a buggy. Samuel drove while Emma and Dr. Burdell surveyed the land. They bounced along a dirt road that bordered the sea, flanked by rich meadows that seemed to lift up out of the swamp with deeply rooted stands of trees. The horse stopped when its hooves began to sink into the sticky mud. Ahead was the watery amorphous vista: a patchwork of meadows and marsh that