Dreams of Glory Read online

  “I hope God is listening,” my father said.

  We prayed, and the Ursuline sisters in the convent prayed; not only for my father but for the dozens of other rebels that Governor O’Reilly had arrested during the night. But our prayers were wasted. My father and five other men were condemned to death. The rest received long jail sentences. All had their property confiscated. My mother stopped saying Catholic prayers. She called in Madame Levesque, the juju woman, who cast a spell. Then she read the cards. Each time she laid them out, spades were dominant. There was no hope. My mother paid Madame Levesque to put a curse on General O’Reilly. As we sat there in the darkness listening to her African chant, our neighbors told us that my father and his five friends had been executed in the courtyard of the army barracks.

  The next few weeks were terrible for me. Night after night in the smothering heat of August, I lay awake in my bed seeing my father before the firing squad. The guns blazed; my father’s face spewed blood. I had nightmares in which I saw those grinning Spaniards thrusting their bayonets into him.

  “We must accept God’s will. What is to be will be,” my mother told me. I found her fatalism outrageous.

  No, I thought, no. I will never believe in the God who did not listen to my prayers, who let a good man, a loving man like my father, die while that florid-faced, gloomy-eyed monster, General O’Reilly - Bloody O’Reilly, we called him - walked our streets, unharmed, unchallenged, even fawned upon by the inevitable majority who were quick to bend their knees before a man in power. I detested my mother’s gratitude to the governor because he had not persecuted us, and let us keep our house, which was, in the tradition of Rampart Street, in my mother’s name. For me, New Orleans became a huge Spanish prison, a place I loathed.

  Nor could I accept the future to which my mother now saw no alternative. Next year, when I became seventeen, I would go to my first dance in the big ballroom on Conde Street. There, some wealthy young Frenchman, or perhaps a Spaniard, would fall in love with me. My mother would make the proper arrangements with him or his family. I would move to my own house on Rampart Street. Again and again, my mother assured me that my beauty would win treasures for us both - servants, slaves, a huge plantation. But I only thought: No, no. I won’t allow myself to be sold that way.

  Early in September of that year, I was in our house, playing the harpsichord my father had bought me in his years of affluence. My friend Louis La Branche, who lived next door, called in the window, “Flora, there’s a man out here who speaks only English. Come help him find his way.”

  Standing in front of the house was an extraordinarily handsome man of about thirty wearing elegant clothes, a powder-blue silk coat over a yellow waistcoat, with high-heeled red shoes. Lace ruffles rose from his shirt. He flourished an ivory-headed cane and dabbed at his sweating forehead with a lace handkerchief. “I am totally lost and about to expire from the sun,” he said. “Can you direct me to the store of Mr. John Fitzpatrick, on Royal Street?”

  “Of course,” I said, pleased to be able to use some of the English my father had taught me. It was the first time I had spoken it since his death. Everyone in New Orleans knew Fitzpatrick’s store. It was where people went to buy the finest cloth for suits and dresses as well as cutlery and china, delicious teas and spices from India, all the exotic and remarkable products of English commerce

  “Would you please be sure I go by a safe way?” the man said. “I have a great deal of money with me.”

  “If you will permit me,” I said, “I will be happy to guide you.”

  “It will be my pleasure, I assure you,” he said with a polite bow.

  The man knew nothing of New Orleans and was obviously puzzled by the people he had seen on Rampart Street. “Why do you live there on the outskirts of the city?” he asked. “You’re obviously a young woman of rank and breeding.”

  “I fear not, sir,” I said, my eyes on the black mud of Royal Street.

  “Come, come, my dear girl,” he said. “Where did you learn to speak English? Whence came that lovely music I interrupted? The fine gown you’re wearing?”

  I said nothing.

  “Is it, can it be, because I have not introduced myself?”

  “By no means,” I said. “Fitzpatrick’s store is at the end of this block. It’s been a pleasure to serve you, sir.”

  I turned and tried to leave him. He stepped playfully around me and blocked my path. “My dear young woman,” he said, “my name is William Coleman. I would like the honor of your acquaintance. May I know your name?”

  “Flora Lopez,” I said. “But you don’t want the honor of my acquaintance.”

  “No doubt your parents would prefer you to speak only to gentlemen whom they know,” he said. “You have taken pity on a stranger in distress and fear a reproof from them. May I call on you and explain the entire incident to them?”

  He spoke with such easy grace, his smile was so persuasive, I felt my body swell with shame and regret. Here was the sort of aristocratic Englishman that my father had yearned to find for me. But he was as unreachable, as untouchable, as if he had stayed in London. To be so close to him, to see how attracted he was to me, was almost unbearable. I could not explain my agitation to him.

  “Thank you, Mr. Coleman,” I said. “But no visit will be necessary. Ask Mr. Fitzpatrick to tell you who we are, on Rampart Street. Then you’ll understand my embarrassment. Good-bye.”

  At home, I found my mother striding up and down the hall of our house. “Where have you been?” she cried. I was amazed. Her unshakable calm had been one of the bulwarks of my life. “Who was this Englishman? Where did you go?” she demanded.

  At first, I was bewildered, then angry. “You have no right to question me like a criminal, Maman. I’m not a child. I can go walking with whom I please,” I said.

  “Don’t you see, you little fool, how that will ruin everything?” she shouted. “You have nothing to offer but your virginity. Lose that and you’ll soon be walking the riverside selling yourself to sailors.”

  I asked my mother how she could say such a thing to me. “Because I must,” she replied. She told me that other mothers on Rampart Street were eager to ruin my reputation so their daughters could win the men of wealth who were certain to bid for me. For the first time I told my mother how much I hated this idea. A tremendous quarrel exploded. She told me to accept the world into which I was born. She said I would eventually thank her for it. When I shouted that I would never thank her, that I would hate her for selling me like a slave, she ordered me to my room.

  As twilight fell the rich smell of my mother’s gumbo filled the house. It was my favorite dish. My mother was trying to placate me in the only way she knew. There was a knock on the front door. I heard a man’s voice speaking to my mother. I recognized it instantly as William Coleman’s. Then my mother’s dark, deep voice answering him. I opened my bedroom door a crack, enabling me to hear William Coleman say, “Madame, I assure you my intentions are entirely honorable. Your daughter is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I ask only for a chance to see her again. She can send me away-”

  “I’ve forbidden her to see you under any circumstances,” my mother said. “You can sail for England any time you wish and leave her ruined. The man who chooses her must be a gentleman from one of the city’s established families.”

  “Madame, I’m prepared to stay in New Orleans long enough to prove to you-”

  My mother called him a liar. She had made inquiries and learned that he had arrived on a cargo ship that was helping Mr. Fitzpatrick transport the goods in his store to Pensacola, a move that had become necessary because the new governor had ordered all non-Catholic merchants out of New Orleans. William Coleman insisted he had only been a passenger on the cargo ship. He was an official of the British government and had a diplomatic passport. He could stay in New Orleans as long as he pleased.

  “Madame, I understand your situation. Mr. Fitzpatrick has explained Rampart Street to me.”

/>   “Then you know the law,” my mother said. “You can’t marry my daughter here. And I’ll never let you take her away from here unmarried. Go now. If I see you near this house again, I’ll ask the authorities for assistance. We people of color are not without influence in this city.”

  That evening at supper I forced myself to be cruel. I ate the succulent crabs and shrimp and drank the soup of the gumbo, which never tasted more delicious, without a complimentary word to my mother. I scarcely spoke to her for the rest of the night. The next morning was Sunday. We went to mass at the Church of St. Louis on the Place d’Armes. Louise La Branche and her mother went with us. As we knelt for the consecration and the priest raised the white host and gold chalice containing Christ’s body and blood above our heads, I slipped a sealed note into Louise’s stubby brown hand. Somehow in my mind it was the right moment to do it, the right way. To defy both my mother and the God who made me a woman of color.

  On the way out of the church, while my mother was greeting several friends, I whispered to Louise, “Go to the English store. Give the letter to Mr. Fitzpatrick. If you open it, I’ll put a curse on you. Your hair will fall out, then your teeth.” Louise nodded, terrified. Everyone on Rampart Street believed in witchcraft.

  The letter was addressed to William Coleman. Its message was brief:

  I heard you at the door last night. I will meet you tomorrow at 2 p.m. in Fitzpatrick’s store.

  Flora Lopez

  The following afternoon, I went to my music lesson near the convent on Chartres Street and pretended to feel ill. My teacher permitted me to leave a half-hour early and I met William Coleman at Fitzpatrick’s store. The place was full of men packing merchandise into crates. Mr. Coleman was wearing a suit of pure white Madras silk and a mauve waistcoat embroidered with roses. Once more he seemed to be the embodiment of aristocracy, and honorable affection.

  “How kind of you to let me see you again,” he said. “It will make my visit to New Orleans a happy memory. I don’t envy your future in this city. Too bad your revolution didn’t succeed. I hear it was led by a Jew who sounded like an English radical.”

  “He was my father,” I said, almost weeping.

  William Coleman was enormously distressed. He took an emerald on a gold chain from a tray of jewelry that was being packed and gave it to me. “I seem to cause you nothing but pain,” he said. “Accept this as a token of my regret. In another country, we might have become more than friends.”

  I refused the gift. I knew my mother would never let me keep it. Mr. Coleman asked me about my father. I told him of his affection for England. “Since I was a child I’ve lived with descriptions of London in my head,” I said.

  William Coleman told me how much he wished he could show me London. He said that men and women could find more happiness there than in any other place on earth. They could also find unhappiness, if they lacked protection and guidance. He took my hand and said I had stirred something in him that he had never felt before, a wish to protect as well as to love a woman without any other motive but the reward of her affection. The women he knew in London presumed that he sought them for their wealth and influence because he himself was not a rich man. They had so disillusioned him he had retired to a government post in the West Indies to escape their mercenary ways. He had been on his way back to London when his ship was rerouted to New Orleans to help Mr. Fitzpatrick. He had resigned himself to marrying one of these London women. Until he saw me.

  Everything in my past combined to make his appeal irresistible. “When are you sailing?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow at dawn,” he said.

  “I’ll be there.”

  It was still dark when I crept from our white house on Rampart Street, leaving a note on my pillow to explain my resolution and to implore my mother’s forgiveness. William was waiting for me on the dock. He had bribed the customs officers, who were conveniently absent. He rushed me aboard and hid me in his tiny cabin. By sunrise, the ship Delilah was in mid-river. Soon after we reached the Gulf of Mexico, the captain married us.

  On the long voyage to London, William became the lover, the friend, I had dreamed of finding. We read novels and poetry. I taught him French, he perfected my English. We talked of London. It seemed, at times, that I was already there, so vividly did William describe it. He also told me about himself. He had been born poor. His father had been a printer and a drunkard, who started a half-dozen newspapers in the provinces and lost them all. His mother had died when he was three, but she had powerful relations in London, men of wealth though not of noble blood. One of these, a merchant and member of Parliament, had paid for William’s education at a school in the city and obtained a post for him in the British Treasury Office. But his life in London had been complicated by lack of money. Most of his friends were sons of noblemen and rich merchants. William’s only hope of wealth was marriage. But he was determined not to sacrifice his happiness for security. Persisting in this determination, he had quarreled with a wealthy older woman who had wanted to marry him. In revenge, she had slandered him and almost succeeded in driving him from society. His wealthy uncle had arranged for him to retreat to Jamaica, where he had served as comptroller of customs. Now, his purse replenished, and his composure regained, he was challenging London to injure his happiness, with me at his side!

  William asked only one indulgence of me. He hoped I would agree to keep our marriage a secret for a while. He would need time to explain it to his uncle, who might consider it highly imprudent. I agreed without the least hesitation. By this time, I was rapturously, obliviously in love with him. I could not even imagine him telling me a lie.

  We spent our first few days in London at an inn. Before long, William regained his old rooms on the second floor of a broad-beamed house on Stonecutters Court in the Pall Mall section of the city. A stream of dressmakers and hatters appeared at his summons and set about making me the best-dressed woman in London, morning gowns and evening dresses in painted satins, soft, lustrous velvets and brocades, all in that year’s favorite colors - apple green, lemon yellow, and pink. There seemed to be no limit to the money William was spending. When I asked him about it, he told me that collector of customs in Jamaica was a very lucrative post; he had received a percentage of the duties paid by every ship that arrived or left the island. Money was no problem; William wanted me to create a sensation when he introduced me to society.

  Create a sensation we did, the day we made our first visit to Ranelagh, the most popular pleasure garden in London. The immense rotunda, over five hundred feet in circumference, was illuminated by dozens of chandeliers. Brilliant colors glowed everywhere, from the green ceiling to the gilded boxes. In the center were four enormous black pillars. Around them strolled the social leaders of London, in their laced and ruffled best.

  Many of the woman, usually the most extravagantly dressed, were masked. These were nobility, William said, and in spite of their masks he had no difficulty identifying them. “That’s the Duchess of Kingston, Lord Grafton’s mistress,” he said. “There’s Lord Hervey with his latest friend. Believe it or not, underneath those skirts you’ll find a man. There’s Lady Buckinghamshire, one of our great gamblers. They call her Faro’s Daughter.”

  I was amazed by the amount of flesh these ladies displayed. I had protested when William insisted on having my gowns cut quite low. Now I saw gowns that were transparent from waist to shoulder or cut so low that the least intake of breath would seem to have exposed everything. William recited a verse from a satire on Ranelagh in which the ladies were described as “Fair maids who at home in their haste/had left all clothing else but a train.”

  At least a dozen times, in our progress around the rotunda, William stopped, made an elaborate bow, and doffed his small, sharp-edged tricorn hat to an acquaintance. Several did not acknowledge his bow, but William seemed unbothered by the rebuffs. He spoke to only one promenader, an army officer in the uniform of the Queen’s Guards, Walter Beckford. He was with another soldie
r, a mere boy, extremely handsome.

  “Good evening, Lieutenant. The prodigal has returned. How is our friend Lord Lyttleton and the other members of the club?”

  “Well. And who is this gorgeous creature?”

  “Her name is Flora Lopez. She’s from New Orleans. The daughter of the richest planter in Louisiana. Her father sent her to visit relatives in Paris, but she has decided to see London first.”

  “You could not have found a better guide, Mademoiselle,” Lieutenant Beckford said to me.

  The boyish soldier with him laughed in a rather snide way. William ignored him, and we resumed our promenade. He told me the boy was Beckford’s latest love. They were both Williamites. Even when he explained the term to me, I found it almost incomprehensible.

  The next night we went to Ranelagh’s chief competitor in London’s world of pleasure, Vauxhall Gardens, in Lambeth, across the Thames from the main part of the city. Here was a different kind of visual charm, a blending of nature and art. Lights shimmered through the trees, and there were delightful walks bounded by hedges and paved with gravel, ending in pavilions, groves, grottoes, decorated by pillars, statues, and paintings. At the main pavilion, an orchestra played and a restaurant served delicious food. But the company at Vauxhall was much different from Ranelagh’s. There were few great lords or ladies. London’s lower classes felt at home here, and they came wearing their best clothes, usually garish imitations of the nobility’s dress.

  William sat us at a table near the orchestra and made wry comments on the crowd’s bad taste. “You could sit here all night and not see a single person above the level of a cheesemonger,” he said.

  “For that slur, Coleman you bastard, I demand satisfaction in Hyde Park at dawn,” said a man’s voice behind us.

  William leaped to his feet, laughing. “My old friend Lord Madman,” he said. “Why aren’t you at Ranelagh?”