The Secrets of Lizzie Borden Read online

  With him I felt reborn, reinvented. He even gave me a new name—Lizbeth. I didn’t have the heart to disillusion him by telling him that I was born just plain Lizzie, not even traditional, ordinary Elizabeth; I let him believe it was just a family nickname.

  “Lizzie sounds like a barmaid, a servant girl,” he said a tad disdainfully, scrunching up his nose as though he smelled something bad. “The world is full of Elizabeths, but Lizbeth is rarer. It has the spark of drama; in its two syllables are married elegance and grandeur! Lizzie be gone!” He snapped his fingers in the air. “To me you shall always be Lizbeth!”

  He made a sketch of Glastonbury Abbey for me. I have it still, along with the book—our book—the one that led us to meet. Never believe for an instant that books aren’t magic; they have the power to bring people together. But I will not tell you its name either. Let the book have its own life; let it fade quietly into obscurity or be remembered by posterity on its own merits. No connection with me shall ordain its fate.

  I remember the way his hand moved over the page of his sketchbook, so confident, so sure, the charcoal pencil leaving a black smudge against his calloused finger. He was an architect after all; he understood the beauty of a line, a curve, an arch. He told me of the Abbey’s history and made me appreciate, and see, Glastonbury with new eyes not obscured by the rosy-tinted spectacles of romance and legends of Avalon and Arthur. And we talked of other cathedrals in other countries, and when I saw them later, on my own, and purchased pictures of them to take back home with me, to cover my naked walls, I remembered every word he had told me about their creation and history.

  He showed me the thorn tree that supposedly sprang from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea when he first set foot on Glastonbury and had ever since flowered every Christmas. He told me how carolers still came to sing its praises and a flowering branch was presented each year at Christmastime to Queen Victoria. We stood in its verdant shadows and I felt his hand upon my waist, so light, so delicate, almost reverent—it was a sacred place, so how fitting that his touch should be just so! Through the blue satin sash and my eyelet dress of an even lighter blue and the rigid whalebone of my corset beneath, his fingertips felt like ghosts, so feathery light, so gently elusive, and intangible that I have at times wondered if I only imagined their caress. I wanted them to burn through, to brand me, so I could actually feel his fingers against my flesh just as their faint memory is still seared there. I wanted more and I thought, in time, I would have it. So slowly that time seemed almost to stop, he leaned down and pressed his lips lingeringly to mine in the tenderest kiss I have ever known.

  My experience of kisses has been limited but varied. I have had rougher, clumsier, lustier, probing kisses where tongues touched, saliva mingled, and teeth scraped, but none of them has ever matched, or even come close to, the tender kiss of the blond, blue-eyed architect beneath the thorn tree at Glastonbury.

  For me, it is my one unsullied moment of breathless wonder that no one can ever spoil or take away from me. I have never told anyone. I have kept it locked close, zealously guarded, within my heart, cherished it, and lived on it every day of my life. By the time you read these words I will be dead, so I will not hear you if you laugh and scoff at this silly old maid and her romantic notions and dreams. Perhaps I am overly sentimental. Men tend to take a different view of such matters; perhaps to him it was just a kiss and he went on to kiss many other American girls beneath that thorn tree. I do not know; nor do I want to. I cherish my illusion, if illusion it was.

  Later, after we had our picnic lunch, he lay back on the warm green grass with his head in my lap, his hat shading his eyes from the summer sun, and we talked of our respective countries. He had been to America before, to study and on occasional business trips, but he always pined for England the whole time he was away.

  He recited a poem to me, his favorite, by a Scottish poet, Alan Cunningham, written about the Stuart monarchs, exiled from their native land and longing to return. His mother had embroidered it and had it framed for him and it always hung on his bedroom wall wherever he went in the world to remind him of home.

  Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be,

  O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!

  When the flower is i’ the bud and the leaf is on the tree,

  The larks shall sing me hame in my ain countrie;

  Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be,

  O hame, hame, hame to my ain countrie!

  The green leaf of loyaltie’s beginning to fall.

  The bonnie White Rose it is withering an’ all.

  But I’ll water it with the blood of usurping tyrannie,

  An’ green it will grow in my ain countrie!

  O, there’s nocht now frae ruin my countrie can save,

  But the keys o’ kind Heaven, to open the grave;

  That a’ the noble martyrs who died for loyalty

  May rise again an’ fight for their ain countrie.

  The great now are gone, a’ wha ventured to save,

  The new grass is springing on the top o’ their grave;

  But the sun through the murk blinks blythe in my e’e,

  “I’ll shine on ye yet in your ain countrie.”

  Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain wad I be,

  O hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie!

  Despite all the rash promises made as I knelt at my father’s feet before I left home, I would have gladly stayed in England with my beloved forever if only he had asked me to. No one will ever know how much I wanted to. I would have, I know, regretted being seen as a traitor, disloyal to my blood, but I wanted a life of my own—a life of color and excitement and wonder and love! I was tired of seeing the world through the window of printed words and pictures frozen in time. I wanted to see it all with my own eyes in vibrant, rich, full, blazing color—living, breathing, moving life, not just still black-and-white or sepia images capturing only one motionless moment in time. I wanted to reach out and touch life with my own hands, and to breathe it all deep into my lungs. I wanted to have my own experiences; I was tired of making do with the siphoned, secondhand recollections of others who went out into the world and actually did things, wonderful, exciting things, while I stayed home like a good and obedient daughter and just read about them in memoirs and magazines. And Love . . . I thought Love had forgotten me, and long ago passed me by as unworthy, I never thought, I never expected, that it would remember me, and bring me someone who suited me so splendidly. If I had dreamed him he could not have been more perfect! He was like the hero of a novel stepped out from between the covers of a book—he was the architect of my dreams!

  That night in the ballroom of his uncle’s London house I wore my first ball gown—a delicate shimmering peach taffeta with yards of trailing skirt and a bustle in back, with ruffles on the sleeves and skirt, and matching satin dancing slippers with roses on the toes and peach silk stockings. Anna, despite her disdain for me, loved to play with hair, and deigned to arrange mine in a mound of glossy, gleaming red curls artfully woven through with peach ribbons and strands of delicate seed pearls, leaving one long ringlet to fall over my bare right shoulder.

  I danced all night in the warm circle of his arms. I thought it was the safest and most wonderful place in the world and there was nowhere else I wanted to be. I am happy here! my eyes and my heart kept blissfully sighing.

  I stood on the terrace at his side with his cloak draped over my shoulders, the white silk lining icily delicious against my bare skin, and, together, we watched the sun rise. And then I went back to the hotel and to bed, though I wasn’t the least bit tired and was much too restless to even think of sleeping. The waltzes we had danced to still played in my mind, and my legs would not stay still; I twisted and turned in my bed and hugged my pillow close, as if I still danced with him. And while Anna slept obliviously in the bed beside mine, so close I could have reached out and tweaked her proud patrician nose, beneath the covers I boldly lifted my nightgown all the way to my chin an
d touched myself and pretended that it was his hands upon me, boldly and tenderly by turns caressing my passion-inflamed breasts and the hot pink petals of my womanhood.

  He never told me that he loved me, that is true, and I was never bold or shameless enough to tell him that I loved him, but even without the words, we both knew. Tentatively, I confided my hopes by letter to Emma; my heart welled to bursting and I needed the relief of confession and there was no one else I could trust, but she betrayed me. Just like Judas, my sister betrayed me, for nothing, not even a pittance of silver. I was dismissed as a fool, a gullible girl who had read too many romance novels, an innocent abroad who knew nothing about life, love, the world, and the liars and beasts called “men.” She made my wonderful, kind, gentle, courteous, thoroughly respectable architect sound like the worst kind of cad. My cheeks still burn at the memory of her stinging words even after all these years. She—and Father—never let me forget what they called “my foolishness” and how I “lost my head” over “that Englishman.” Their words fairly dripped with scathing scorn like venom whenever they spoke of him.

  The last time I saw him he was walking away from me, after seeing me and my party safely aboard the train that would take us on the next stage of our journey. He was most solicitous and even brought a selection of newspapers and magazines and a box of chocolates to help us pass the time. And he had thoughtfully written out a list of sights for us to see in France and Italy, but it was of interest only to me; the others could talk of nothing but dresses and hats and the high-society beaus they hoped to catch.

  I can see him now, walking away from me, out of my life, his broad shoulders bent against the wind, his right hand holding his derby clamped tight upon his head, and his stormy gray overcoat flapping like wild-goose wings about his legs. I couldn’t stay and he couldn’t go with me; we had to say good-bye. He promised he would write to me, and there was something in his eyes and the way his lips lingered when he kissed my hand that told me I would one day soon see the words I so longed to hear set down in black and white. That he would say the words that I, as a woman, could not say.

  In Paris everyone seemed to be in love, or at least in lustful thrall, and brazenly unafraid of showing it. It seemed everywhere I looked I saw couples strolling arm in arm, women laying their heads upon their escorts’ strong shoulders, or sitting opposite them at small tables for two in sidewalk cafés, leaning toward each other, holding hands, or even boldly daring to kiss in broad daylight on the boulevard or a park bench.

  Carrie, Anna, and Nellie turned up their noses at the notion of visiting the Louvre and Notre Dame, and instead rushed off to the dress shops. They could not hail a cab or find a post office without imploring help from some English-speaking bystander, but they could say “Where are the dress shops?” in four different languages. And poor Miss Mowbry indignantly took to her bed and refused to leave it for days after an “impertinent waiter” suggested she try the escargots. When she accepted his recommendation “with pleasure” he smilingly set a plate of snails before her, bidding her, “Bon apétit, madame.”

  “Young man, in America we do not eat snails; we step on them!” she witheringly reprimanded him. “Take these away and dispose of them properly!” she commanded, then, nose high in the air, retreated grandly to her hotel room and ordered tea and toast sent up.

  But we all had a weakness for the sweets. The French pastries—chocolate éclairs, cream puffs, marrons glacés, and chocolate bonbons stuffed with decadent creams, supple caramel, or rich fruity syrups.

  I saw the Mona Lisa on my own; I thought she looked like a woman made most unhappy by love and wondered what secrets she had kept in the lockbox of her heart. I saw love—its promises, fulfillment, the lack or loss of it, and the longing for it—in almost every painting and statue my lovesick eyes lighted upon.

  I heard the bells of Notre Dame and gazed up in awe at its magnificent Gothic edifice, the first to use flying buttresses, to prevent stress fractures in the walls, my architect had told me. Inside I stood, with my arms spread wide and my head thrown back, and let a rainbow of light wash over me as the sun shone through the stained glass, bathing me in vibrant color.

  And I went, alone, to see Monsieur Eiffel’s controversial tower, the tallest in the world, just completed the previous year. Some called it “an eyesore,” “a pox upon the skyline of Paris”; they thought that it was too modern, that the riveted iron structure lacked the romance and grace of Gothic cathedrals and the palaces of kings. They did not see it the way my architect did—as a triumph of engineering and mathematics—or understand the prime importance of wind resistance in its design. Though I far preferred the palaces and cathedrals myself, I still thought it magnificent. I climbed its many stairs and stood for over an hour, alone with my thoughts, staring out at the view wishing my love were there beside me.

  The one place my traveling companions did accompany me was to the Moulin Rouge, the notorious Red Mill; even Miss Mowbry roused herself from her bed of wounded dignity, because she felt a chaperone was an absolute necessity if we were to venture into such a hedonistic atmosphere, though the hotel desk clerk assured us that respectable ladies went there all the time and we simply could not miss the Can-Can; we would reproach ourselves for the rest of our lives if we left Paris without seeing that. Then he kissed his fingers and launched a volley of rhapsodic rapid-fire French so dizzyingly fast that it went right over our heads but set our curiosity on fire. So away we went to the Moulin Rouge to see the Can-Can.

  And it was amazing, to see the blades of the giant windmill spinning slowly against the night sky, lit up with thousands of red, gold, and white electric lights. I never dreamed there could be so many lightbulbs on one structure!

  Inside, it was as big, bright, and gaudy as it was out. Amidst the rapid, carefree music and babble of voices we were relieved to see a great many women of seemingly respectable appearance, both escorted and unescorted, seated at the tables, and this eased our fears somewhat. A band in red and gold jackets played and the floor swarmed with dancers. It was the most vibrant and vivid place I had ever seen and I longed to lose myself and become a part of it.

  There were bejeweled courtesans, the famed and fabled Grand Horizontals, in extravagant gowns trimmed with feathers and gems, silk flowers, ermine, sable, beads and glittering appliqués, so décolleté that every time they moved their breasts threatened to overflow like cherry-topped blancmanges. Jewels sparkled on their ears, necks, and wrists, the cold, star-bright light of diamonds and whole rainbows of vibrant colors—emeralds, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, and topazes. Their faces were rouged and painted, their lashes blackened, and their eyes lined dramatically with kohl, and they wore their hair, its color often of such a startling shade it could hardly be natural, piled high in mounds of curls, twists, and braids, embellished with feathers, flowers, and jewels. One woman even had a small gilded birdcage with a chirping canary perched on a tiny swing inside woven into her tall pompadour of very blond hair, like a modern-day Marie Antoinette. Her hairdresser must have been something of an architect himself to build such a towering mass of hair!

  We were shocked to see a Negro man, his skin as black as tar, seated intimately at a table with a woman with milk-pale skin and the reddest hair I had ever seen in my life. She wore canary-yellow satin, her bare shoulders and overflowing bosom ringed with billowing yellow feathers, and what must have been a fortune in honey-colored topaz and diamonds glittering on her gown and about her neck and wrists and snaking through her scarlet tresses. The Negro boldly opened her purse, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, and took out a gold cigarette case. He put two in his mouth and lit them, then took one out and put it between his companion’s lips. We had never seen such a thing in America nor thought to see it elsewhere. In America just looking at a white woman would have been enough to get the Negro lynched, but in Paris no one seemed to think anything of it at all. Freedom, glorious freedom! the whole city seemed to scream. No one
was a slave here—except to their own passions!

  There was a group of women, a select society, like a club unto themselves, in which all others were unwelcome. They did not paint their faces and seemed to disdain feminine frills and flirtatious manners. Some of them wore men’s clothing, complete suits that looked straight out of the shops on Savile Row, dove gray, coffee and toffee colored, dark blue, or black frock coats with carnations in the buttonholes, beautiful brocade or watered-silk or garish checkered waistcoats, striped and flowered neckties, and tight-fitting trousers, or starkly elegant black and white evening clothes with black silk top hats and long, dashing opera cloaks lined in either red or white silk. Many of them wore their hair cropped short just like a man’s, slicked back until it shone like patent leather or else erupting in a riot of curls or waves that would have made a seasoned sailor seasick. Some of them even smoked cigarettes, pipes, or cigars and drank strong liquor! There were a few who were a tad more feminine; they dressed in proper women’s suits, but severely tailored, with mannish jackets and prominent, padded shoulders, and no feminine frills at all, not a bit of lace anywhere that I could see, or even a silk rose or a flirty feather on their hats, and their hair was plainly coiffed, severely scraped back from their faces and painfully pinned with not even a curl or a frizz to soften the effect. The only softness was in their manner to each other. These women danced together, waltzing in each other’s arms, lost in their own little word, or else sat close together holding hands, sharing cigarettes, and even daring to kiss, openly, upon the mouth, just like lovers. No men, except the waiters, ever went near them. Yet no one except us bewildered Americans looked askance; to everyone else they seemed to be just part of the scenery.