The Flaming Corsage

Edward in the City of Tents, September 1885

IT WAS THE year the State Fair came to Albany, and as Edward Daugherty walked through the vast city of tents and impromptu structures that had sprung up in a matter of weeks at the Fairgrounds on the Troy Road, he felt a surge of strength, a certainty that he was changing substantially, at the breaking dawn of a creative future.

He could see the tents on the midway where seven newspapers had their offices and seven sets of reporters wrote yards of daily copy about Shorthorns and Clydesdales, Cotswold sheep, and Poland China swine. In the Albany Evening Journal’s tent he found Maginn writing at a table.

“What news do you have of the swine?” Edward asked.

“What a coincidence that you ask,” Maginn said, and he thrust what he was writing at Edward, who read:

Country maidens in their best bib and tucker shot coy glances at robust lads of brawny arm and sun-browned face as a brilliantly sunny day brought thousands to the midway of the Fair yesterday. Flirtations were numerous and many lords of creation succumbed before batteries of sparkling eyes.

“Splendid,” said Edward, “but what about the swine?”

“They are the swine,” said Maginn.

Edward was twenty-six, dark-haired and tall, considered by women young and old to be the handsomest of men. Thomas Maginn, lanky and lean at twenty-eight, was considered a ragtail beanpole with an acid tongue. The two worked for rival Albany newspapers, Maginn on The Journal, Edward on The Argus, had known each other a year, but now, as working rivals on the Fair’s midway — better than a circus, as all knew — they had tested each other’s attitudes toward this instant city and were impressed with its two miles of stables, its racetrack, its complete farm, its vast Hall of Machinery with the latest thermostatic chicken incubators, potato diggers, sulky plows, and typewriters, the oyster pavilion, the temporary lockup/courtroom where troublemakers won swift justice, and the curiosities — the solid-silver razor, the huge pyramid of sacked salt, the embalmed dog in a casket.

“A confected metropolis,” Maginn had called the Fair, and Edward agreed that its rapid construction, and its appeal to both the elite and the crowd, reflected a creativity that could harmonize the wonders of existence with a flick of the mind. To such creation both young men aspired, seeing themselves as citizens of a world beyond newspapers. Edward had graduated with honors from Albany Academy and Columbia College. Maginn had been expelled from Columbia for drunkenness in his sophomore year, an autodidact ever since.

“Luckiest day of my life when they kicked me out,” he said. “Unburdened forever of pedants and pederasts.”

One night after the Fair closed, Maginn cajoled Edward into joining him at the Freethinkers convention at the Leland Opera House in Albany for a lecture on “The Aristocracy of Free Thought,” and they heard a man named Palmer aver that “a true gentleman would always embrace the highest forms of culture and contribute most to the good of his fellowmen. And the true gentleman will maintain that woman’s consent is as requisite as man’s.”

“I don’t know as that’s necessary,” Maginn whispered.

“The best must rule,” Palmer declaimed. “No man can prevail among the true elect if he remains imprisoned in the bastille of a dwarfing environment.”

Just such an environment, Maginn said, he and Edward inhabited as Albany newsmen, but only temporarily. Edward was about to publish a novel, The Mosquito Lovers (about Irish convict laborers as expendable martyrs in the building of the Erie Canal, men who elected to risk a dig through malarial swampland rather than rot their souls in jail). Maginn regularly published reviews of fiction and belles lettres in the Atlantic Monthly, had just finished revaluing Melville’s The Confidence-Man as an underrated work on human treachery, and was writing a novel.

This imminence of large-minded success convinced the young men they were vastly smarter than the run of Fairgoers, including their fellow reporters, and would soon inhabit a lofty perch in America’s high culture. Maginn had shown Edward his Melville essay. Edward’s response was “Well written but perfunctory. It would improve if you didn’t view your own opinions as unmatched in human thought.” Edward let Maginn read his novel in manuscript. Maginn found it “seriously wanting as fiction, but you write such effective dialogue you should be a playwright.”

This critical honesty formed a bond of truth-telling between them, and their friendship deepened when they found they could talk to each other about anything at all.

As they strolled the trim rolling field that came down from the western rise of the valley, they eyed passing females and tried to recall all women they had ever desired. Maginn observed that a voluptuous woman was the greatest gift the universe offered to an imaginative man, a statement that seemed true to Edward; but the word “voluptuous,” “How do you define it, Maginn?”

“A woman who delights in her body and what a man does to it,” said Maginn. “A woman who loves the encounter.”

“You mean a loose woman, then?”

“Not quite, but all women are loose at some time or other,” Maginn said.

“I disagree,” Edward said. “The most voluptuous woman I’ve ever met I know in my soul isn’t promiscuous, and is undoubtedly a virgin.”

“They become loose after they cease to be virgins.”

“You are very down on women.”

“Every chance I get,” said Maginn.

“I may marry a woman who doesn’t conform to your view of promiscuous females.” Then, without wishing to, but in defense of his putative bride-to-be, he blurted out her name: “Katrina Taylor.”

“Katrina Taylor! She said yes to you?”

“Not yet. I’m waiting for her answer.”

“You are one extraordinarily lucky son of a bitch if you snare her, my friend. She’s a woman in a million. I met her last February skating on the canal, but I doubt she knows my name.”

“She may not have me,” Edward said.

“Ye gods! Katrina Taylor! Thinking about a woman like that must drive you mad. What do you do when the urge comes on you?”

“Which urge? I have many.”

“The only urge worth yielding to. It’s on me now just talking about women, and I thought I’d yield over at the Pasture.”

“The Pasture?”

“You are benighted, Daugherty. You’ve been here a week and haven’t heard of the other tent city? We must complete your education.”

As dusk enveloped the Fairgrounds and the Fair’s seven gates closed for the night, the young men walked to the Bull’s Head tavern, beyond the fenced pasture where six bulls rested beside a barn. They walked across the tavern’s open meadow, where prizefights were staged, to four small tents standing in a clearing of the bordering woods. This was the Fair-spawned Night Village, where the Ladies of the Pasture sold bucolic love. The brothels downtown in Albany and across the river in Troy were servicing multitudes of visiting Fairgoers in quest of passion’s two-bit nocturne; but the higher-paid Ladies of the Pasture opened for business at high noon and worked well past moonrise, catering to postmeridian libido, and to lust which lacked the time or inclination to quit the Fair’s environs.

The night was brisk and Edward and Maginn both wore fedoras and three-button suits. A man sitting in front of one open tent lit by a kerosene lamp was accepting money from a tall, brawny farm boy. The boy paid, then bent himself into the tent and closed the flap behind him.

“You boys in the market?”

“We’re shopping,” said Maginn.

“Anything in particular?”

“They should be pretty.”

“Hell, they’re all pretty once you’re in that tent. Just go say hello and see what you like. Last three tents. The first one’s busy.”

“We’ll take a look,” Maginn said.

As he and Edward walked to the farthest tent, Edward stopped and asked aloud, “Why am I doing this?”

“What is it you’re doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you’re making a discovery,” Maginn said. “Like Lewis and Clark charting the Northwest Territory, we’re about to enter the heady hemisphere of love.”

“I’m already in love.”

“Love may look virginal, but also whorish. You have to differentiate the forms.”

“This will serve me well?”

“You will earn medals for your service.”

“Who awards the medals?”

“The whores of the world, by which I mean most of the human race.”

“You have a dark view of life, Maginn.”

“Dark, like French pussy,” Maginn said.

At the last tent Maginn raised the flap and they walked in on two young whores who looked about twenty, bundled in coats, sitting on chairs.

“Good evening, ladies, we came to say hello.”

“Is that all you came for?” asked the one with blond bangs and a crossed eye.

“We’d like to see what you’re offering.”

The girls stood and took off their coats, showing matching bodies clad in chemisettes and black stockings.

“My name is Nellie,” said the girl with normal eyes, lowering her shoulder strap. She was dark-haired and chesty. “We came to see the Fair,” she said.

“And have you seen it?”

“Not yet. We found this job, and when we get through at night the Fair is closed.”

“Well, we’re glad you’re not closed,” Maginn said. “You look lovely from the anterior perspective, but may we now have your posterior revelation?”

“What’s that?” the cross-eyed girl asked.

“He means our fannies,” Nellie said. The two turned their backs and bent from the waist.

“Very intriguing,” Maginn said. “We’ll be back.”

“Thank you kindly, girls,” Edward said.

“Don’t mention it,” Nellie said, and she raised the front of her chemisette for Edward. Maginn pulled Edward by the arm outside and toward the next tent.

“She was nice,” Edward said.

“Not bad for starters,” Maginn said, “but we shouldn’t accept the first offer.”

“What if you like the offer?”

“You’re fond of busty women.”

“I liked her style.”

“She lacks all style. What you like is subliterate quim.”

“Whatever you call it, it’s worth some attention.”

“Take a squint here first,” Maginn said, and he opened the tent flap. A woman in her thirties, her long brown hair streaked with gray, smiled at her visitors. She was sitting on her cot, wrapped in a blanket, only her black stockings visible.

“You boys looking to get warm?”

“Maybe even hot,” Maginn said.

“That can happen,” the whore said, and she stood and spread her arms to open the blanket. “Here’s the stove.”

She had penetrating eyes that gave her face a smartness Edward liked. She wasn’t as chesty as Nellie, but ample, and her symmetry raised the issue of sexual aesthetics in Edward’s brain.

“I wish we had a camera,” he said.

“Camera ain’t what you point at this,” the whore said.

“What should we point at it?” Maginn asked.

“You really asking me that question?”

“He’s making a joke,” Edward said.

“I ain’t here for jokes.”

“I apologize for him. How much do you charge?”

“Six bits, same as the others, unless I do more. You know what I mean?”

“I guess I do,” Edward said.

“I guess you don’t, if you gotta guess about it.”

“What’s your name?” Edward asked.

“Rose,” the whore said. “And I got the pink petals to prove it.”

“I think I’ll stay,” Edward said.

“There’s another tent to check out,” Maginn said.

“You check it and give me a report. I’m with Rose.”

“That’s my cute boy,” Rose said.

“All right, since you insist,” Maginn said. “I’ll meet you in the tavern in fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes?” said Edward. “What if it’s two hours?”

“You take two hours,” Rose said, “you get your money back.” She unbuttoned Edward’s suit coat.

“Don’t wait for me past Tuesday,” Edward told Maginn.

Edward wondered at his own choice, decided he was behaving instinctually, without accessible logic, but knew his behavior was full of awe and pity and reverence and some bizarre desire yet to be understood. As Rose moved through her early performance Edward adjudged her a woman of imaginative display: skilled in revelation, exalted by self-communion, who yielded herself without haste. “A gift of flint, nest of tinder” is how he would describe such a woman in one of his short stories. She moved Edward slowly into fervency.

“Tell Rose you like her and you’re gonna take her.”

“I like Rose so much I’m taking her for a ride.”

“That’s my cute boy.”

“This train is moving.”

“All aboard. Going home to your best girl.”

“Rose is my best girl.”

“Rose is the only girl you ever wanted.”

“Rose is there from the first day.”

“You couldn’t go no place without Rose.”

“We’re going to heaven, me and Rose.”

“This boy is so nice that Rose is in love.”

“I’m in love with Rose.”

“The cute boy’s in love with an old whore.”

“Rose isn’t old.”

“The cute boy’s in love with an ugly old whore.”

“I’m in love with a beautiful whore named Rose.”

“The cute boy makes Rose happy.”

“Is Rose happy making love?”

“Rose is happy making money.”

“Which comes first, the money or the love?”

“They all come before Rose.”

“Gotta go, Rose.”

“Not yet, cute boy.”

“Rose is so nice it’s nice, but I’m going away.”

“It’s not two hours.”

“Two hours couldn’t be better than now.”

“My cute boy.”

“Goodbye, Rose.”

“There goes the cute boy.”

“There goes Rose.”

“Cute boy is gone.”

“And Rose?”

“Rose is where she is.”

At the crowded bar in the Bull’s Head tavern, Maginn greeted Edward with a triumphant smile.

“Two for the price of one,” he said. “I went back to the first tent and opted for the bung-eyed bitch, but she was so lackadaisical I departed her corpus and threatened not to pay for such inertia. Her tenting twin — Nellie, wasn’t it? — came to the rescue. Very vigorous, Nellie. Bicameral bawds. Unexpected dividend. How was Rose?”

“Splendid.”

“In what way?”

“In all ways.”

“You went all ways?”

“She was splendid. Let it go at that.”

“The details are important, Daugherty. As a reporter you should know that.”

“This place is too noisy,” Edward said. The bar was two deep with drinkers, fogged with cigar and pipe smoke, and in a corner a fight seemed about to happen. “Let’s go someplace quiet. I’m hungry.”

“Venereal delight stokes the appetite.”

They took the West Shore train from the Fairgrounds to downtown Albany, and at Edward’s insistence walked up from the station to the Kenmore for dinner.

“I can’t afford their prices,” Maginn said. “I’m not yet part of the plutocracy, like some of my friends.”

“It’s good that I am,” Edward said. “I’ll buy dinner.”

“Done,” said Maginn. “A plutocratic gesture if there ever was one.”

In addition to wages from The Argus, Edward had an annuity from birth given to him by Lyman Fitzgibbon that would keep him from starving until he reached age thirty, four years hence, and this allowed him to keep rooms on Columbia Street, close to the newspaper and just up from the Kenmore, where, unlike Maginn, he dined often.

He went to the men’s washroom and soaped off the residue of Rose’s body from his hands and his privates. Then he went back upstairs and with Maginn sat in the tan leather chairs of the hotel’s lobby lounge while they waited for a table. Maginn bought a cigar at the newsstand, bit off the end and spat it into the brass cuspidor, then lit the cigar with a match he struck on the sole of Edward’s shoe.

Edward saw Katrina entering with her parents through the hotel’s side door on Columbia Street, avoiding the lobby and the vulgar stares of the loungers. The three went directly to the dining room — reserved table, of course.

“Isn’t that the magnificent woman you proposed to?” Maginn asked.

“That is she. With Mama and Papa.”

“Her beauty is exhilarating.”

“I agree.”

“I wonder how she compares with Rose.”

“Wonder to yourself,” Edward said.

“Protective already,” said Maginn. “I can see the transformation. ‘Once the favorite of whores of all ages, Edward Daugherty has evolved into the perfect husband.’ ”

Edward perceived that Maginn, the gangling whoremonger, was miffed that women in both tents had given their preferred eye to Edward; and he would, in a later year, remember this day as the beginning of his relationship to Maginn’s envy and self-esteem, the beginning of competitive lives, even to evaluating the predilections of whores (“They picked you because you picked them, no trick to that”). It would be Maginn’s oft-repeated credo that “the only thing that can improve on a lovely whore is another lovely whore.” Edward’s unspoken credo toward Katrina-as-bride-to-be was: “If she becomes my wife, then my wife is my life.”

The Kenmore’s maître d’, a light-skinned Negro, came toward them. “Your table is ready, Mr. Daugherty,” he said.

“Very good, Walter.”

He led them to a table next to Katrina and her parents. But Edward asked for one at the far end of the crowded dining room, Albany’s largest, where Parlatti’s orchestra was playing a medley from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, all the rage.

“I’d like to meet your bride formally,” Maginn said. “Will you introduce me?”

“Another time. And she’s not yet my bride.”

They walked past the Taylors without a glance. After they’d been seated beside a thicket of ported palms, Edward walked back and greeted Katrina, Geraldine, and Jacob Taylor. He stared at Katrina, her golden hair swept into an almost luminous soft corona, and was about to bend and kiss her hand; but then he thought of his mouth on Rose’s body, and only bent and nodded and smiled his love toward her.

“Your friend Giles Fitzroy won two gold medals today at the Fair, for his saddle horses,” Edward said to her.

“The Fitzroys do breed champions,” Jacob Taylor said.

“I’ve been reading what you write about the Fair,” Katrina said. “You make it so exciting. I want to see it.”

The sound of her voice, the cadence of her speech, seemed musical to Edward, a fragment of a Mozart aria. Everything about her had the aura of perfection. He knew his perception must be awry, and he thought he should try to find flaws in the woman. But to what end? Is it so wrong to embrace perfection? Am I a dunce to believe in it?

“Come tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll give you an insider’s tour. You come with her, Geraldine; you, too, Jake.”

“I think not,” Geraldine Taylor said. “I’m told it’s overrun with a vulgar crowd.”

“There are some of those,” Edward said, and he understood that Geraldine could accept no generosity, not even a meaningless invitation, if it came from beneath her station.

“People like the Fitzroys and the Parkers and the Cornings are exhibitors,” Edward said, “and they’re frequently around. I’ll stop by in the morning, Katrina, and see what you decide.” He nodded farewell and went back to Maginn, who was buttering a biscuit as a waiter poured his wine.

“I sit here and look at these good burghers with their gold watch chains dangling over their pus bellies,” Maginn said, “and I all but drown in my loathing.”

“That’s juvenile,” said Edward. “They’re only people who’ve found a way to make some money.”

“Come on now, Edward. They’re another breed. With them and us it’s like thoroughbreds and swine. Those mosquito-loving Irish canal diggers in your novel are sewer rats to them. But I loathe them just as much as they loathe me. Is there one of them in this dining room who’d invite you home if they knew you drink in a saloon that has an encampment of whores in the backyard? Or me — if they found out my old man salvages hides and bones of dead horses and sells their flesh to pig farmers?”

“I would,” said Edward.

“You’re a rare specimen,” said Maginn, “and I drink to whatever makes you say that.” He sipped his wine, put down the glass. “But then you still tote the baggage of the sentimental mick, offering alms to forlorn souls. You’re really not that long out of the bog yourself, are you?”

“Long enough that I’m at home in this room, no matter what company I keep.”

“Touché. Yet you wouldn’t introduce me to Katrina. Too obvious a bogtrotter, is that my problem?”

“It’s a family situation. Let’s move on to something else, shall we?”

Edward imagined Maginn unloosing his gutter candor in the presence of Katrina and her parents, and he winced. Just what Geraldine expects from the Irish. Maginn, you’re great company, and you own a fine mind, but you are a problem.

“You keep complaining about your editor at The Journal,” Edward said. “How do you get along with him?”

“Like a tree gets along with a dog.”

“If you’re interested, I’ll put in a word at The Argus. I know my editor would like to have your lively style in our pages. He’s said as much.”

“My present editor loathes my lively style.”

“There’s a lot of loathing in your life, Maginn.”

“You connect me at The Argus, my loathing will dissipate like warm sunshine lifting fog off a bog.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“You’re a princely fellow, Daugherty, a princely fellow, for a mick. I’ll buy the wine.”