iris moore

June 28, 2016May 16, 2020

Iris Moore, Part II

Her situation was not favourable. Mrs. Whitney, who liked to write her long letters, had suggested Iris move to New York. It was true that her own daughters had no longer need for her excellent services, but one could certainly find a family who would be very glad to have Iris. She could make no promises, but Iris should consider the offer. And being such a pretty young lady, Mrs. Whitney was certain that Iris would not have to be a Miss Moore for long, since there were very many eligible men in New York with a steady income and excellent manners. Iris read these repeated offers and felt she was sitting in Mrs. Rose’ small parlour again, drinking tea and eating cakes while Mrs. Timms and Mrs. Smith-Feldworth eyed her carefully as if she might be carrying the Independent disease.

The letters had surprised and disappointed Iris who had thought Mrs. Whitney to be a more lenient woman. After all, she avidly supported the Suffragettes, much to her wealthy friends’ horror. Then again, Mrs. Whitney’s continuous invitations and suggestions to see New York’s eligible bachelors for herself also made Iris wonder if her life alone with her mother hadn’t made her a little too independent. She was used to taking care of herself, of cooking for herself and cleaning the house without any help, managing her own income and reading whatever she liked and wanted.
The reading, admittedly, was something not only Mrs. Rose and her friends, but Mrs. Whitney had always disapproved of: a young mind needed guidance in all things printed. Something that looked intelligent and fortuitous could be deepest vice in disguise, and thus adequate guidance was needed, though all suggestions the older women made were always met with polite smiles and an iron will never to follow them, though, naturally, Iris was careful not to show this explicitly.

Even at a young age Iris had considered herself bright enough to know what was good for her and what would make her spirits unnecessarily troubled. She made sure to keep an even balance between those novels Mrs. Timms disapproved of so much and more worthy literature such as that of Messrs. Milton, Coleridge, and Browning. When she grew older, she did add one or two French writers for entertainment’s sake, though Iris was careful to hide them from sight when they had guests in the parlour. Consequently her mind had acquired a certain natural independence, one her mother did not curtail, since she had come from a learned family; not to mention that, with Captain Moore gone for so many months, Mrs. Moore had acquired a sense of independence herself. Iris’ mother had always said it was an Eduards’ trait, Eduards being her maiden name.

‘All the women in our family were known to be headstrong, maybe even rebellious,’ Mrs. Moore had once said. ‘I guess there is some truth then, in the story about one of our ancestors who married a Red Indian. And with Grandpa Eduards’ marrying an Italian, you can imagine what that amounts to. So you see sweetheart,’ she sighed then, smiling at Iris. ‘It seems that a part of us will never adhere to rules.’

It was maybe this knowledge that had led Iris to not question her own independence. She always felt a sense of surprise if not outright disdain for those young women her age who were scandalized by her opinions or openly made fun of her, though that was no longer of any importance once they sold the house in Maple Street. And now she was in a small room above a busy street, living on very little, and that growing even less by the day. Iris’ circumstances didn’t look as if they were going to change soon either, despite her daily prayers for a means of help or at least a better place to work than Mr. Emerson’s.

Iris soon grew despondent. Was she to always live in this small room with the large advertisements of Forsythe’s White across of her, watching the carriages and trams pass by, while the sidewalks teemed with people? Was she to never live in a house again? Was she ever to cook in a decent kitchen again, instead of making some soup or frying a couple of eggs on the small stove she also used for heating? Would she ever drink real Earl Grey again instead of this very second-rate tea? Iris didn’t know, though she never ceased saying her nightly prayers. She saw her hours behind Mr. Emerson’s counter as an act of Christian patience, trying not to think of the fact that Mr. Emerson often treated her no better than a maid, even resolving to call her Iris rather than Miss Moore if there were no customer’s present. And sometimes even when they were present. At least Carter never forgot the Miss, but then Carter would look at her that way… Daily, Iris wished, hoped, and prayed for something to happen that would change her circumstances and so never forgot to say her prayers before she went to bed.

It was an unassuming day when things began to change. Iris could still remember how and when Mr. Godfrey from next door gave her his paper. He was a salesman whose family lived in the country. He only stayed in the room next door during the week, and like Iris during her days at St. James, took the train to his family every Friday afternoon, only to return straight to work on Monday morning. Mr. Godfrey was a portly man of forty-five who had had some education and was, though a little gruff, always a gentleman. He liked to say that it was nice to talk to a person with some sense in these parts. He also felt sorry for Iris, and if he happened to remember, asked her if she wanted the paper. That was the case that afternoon when Iris returned from Mr. Emerson’s feeling she would need some real and lasting distraction after a very trying day.

She accepted the offer and had a small chat with Mr. Godfrey about the past week, since that day was a Friday, before he ran down the stairs to catch the next tram to the station. Back in her small room, Iris made her meagre tea and drank it sitting at her window, watching the busy street below, and quite forgot the newspaper due to her fatigue. She didn’t remember it until the following morning which was a Saturday, the day of Sabbath for Mr. Emerson’s wife, who was actually a Lieberman, which made Saturday Iris’ only truly free day. Every other Sunday afternoon she had to help with the tea parties and picnics the Emerson’s liked to arrange for the wealthier families in Summerfield half an hour away.

The sun shone brightly that Saturday morning, the light falling in a broad beam into her small room. Iris sat at her small table in the sun and started reading the paper Mr. Godfrey had given her. She ended up reading every piece, from the news and society pages to the business section and the funnies. She even went through the obituaries, until she reached the personals, where she came across a peculiar advertisement.

It was from the law firm Sanders, Sanders & Jones and explained that there were men in the Territories out west, hardworking, respectable men who, due to their work, did not find the time to respectfully court a woman to be their wife. The Mountjoy Courtship Agency (MCA), headed by said law firm, had taken up the duty to find suitable women for these hardworking men. These women should all know how to cook and take care of a household by themselves, and be of a good Christian upbringing. For more information one was to write to the Mountjoy Courtship Agency, c/o Sanders, Sanders & Jones whose offices were, considering the address, in one of the best parts of the city. It was added that the Women’s Weekly Journal, one of the leading women’s magazines of the city, considered the MCA ‘a respectable organization that honored the values of upstanding Christian citizens’.

It was very strange. To Iris, it sounded as if these men were ordering their wives by mail, or rather, sending out lawyers to find them. How busy could they be to not find the time to meet and court a young woman? That was when she had to think of her neighbour Mr. Godfrey and those like him, men who worked all week and only had time to visit their family on weekends. If you did not have enough friends, or did not have the means to go to the city for some time and maybe attend a dance, finding a wife would prove difficult. And no respectable young woman would go to a dance without a friend at her side, or an eagle-eyed chaperone which made the situation even more difficult.

Iris read through the advertisement again, thought, pondered, and considered. The chances she had of finding someone suitable without the help of Mrs. Rose and her friends, or Mrs. Whitney and her eligible New York men was very slim. Yet to rely on these means to find a husband irked Iris greatly, for she had met some of the sons and nephews praised to her in the highest tones by Mrs. Rose, and had often seen the young and not-so-young men who came to visit the Whitney’s when she was still tutoring Rosemarie and Abigail. Iris could not see herself connected to a person who could either only talk of food and horses or only of himself. Thus, it maybe was not so unfortunate that she had come across the MCA c/o Sanders, Sanders & Jones.

Even so, Iris considered for the whole of that Saturday if she should contact Messrs. Sanders & Jones about the MCA. Then again, with the way things were going, with Mr. Emerson’s subtle insolence and Mrs. Rose’ repeated invitations to tea, Iris didn’t see why she should not see into finding an eligible bachelor on her own. Mrs. Rose and her friends would have found it very independent of her, but Iris felt she would rather prefer the Mountjoy Courtship Agency to find a possible suitor than Mrs. Rose and her fastidious friends. At least with the first she could be certain of an amount of objectivity. It was late afternoon when Iris took out ink and paper, and set up a short letter to the Mountjoy Courtship Agency, writing that a friend of hers had heard of their agency and was now interested to know what kind of courtship was to be expected from a respectable firm of law. She kept the letter serious and maybe a little cool, and sent it out that evening, using one of her last two-penny stamps.

The answer was prompt: a whole set of pamphlets and copies of ‘experiences’ by women who wedded these hardworking men, men they only knew by photograph and name. An Agnes Thornton née Bernard said her Mr. Thornton was an honest Christian, steady in his ways and never given to waywardness or drink. She counted herself fortunate to have married such a good man and could only encourage other unmarried women to find their partners by Sanders, Sanders & Jones’ honourable assistance, who enabled such a blessed opportunity to enrich the lives of so many.

A Winifred Reynolds née George was in even greater raptures. She had at first been sceptical, but finding herself in the uncomfortable position of having neither family nor fortune, she decided to find out if what Messrs. Sanders & Jones promised held true, only to meet Mr. Reynolds by letter and photograph, after which a few month’s of courtship ensued by mail. They were married by post and notary with the legal assistance of Messrs. Sanders & Jones and with the due blessing of a curate. Finally, said Winifred joined her Mr. Reynolds in a small logging town in Montana. It had been love on first sight, or rather, first letter, and meeting the real Mr. Reynolds, whom she until then had only known by paper, only enhanced her joy. Since then, Winifred Reynolds née George lived in constant praise of the Lord’s graciousness for helping her out of a truly desperate state to a life of happiness and contentment. She was forever grateful to the MCA and to Mssrs. Sanders, Sanders & Jones, since through their aide she had found true happiness.

All other letters, of which there were ten, were much the same, and seeing the women’s accounts were in fact only slight variations of her own, (for she, Iris, was indeed coming into ‘a desperate state’), she decided to fill out the form Messrs. Sanders & Jones had sent with the pamphlets and letters, describing her height, eye- and hair-color, writing ‘Christian’ in the Religion section, listing three of her best dishes, adding that she had learnt how to make a Bolognese from her mother. In the Housekeeping section, she gave her opinion on cleanliness and the necessity of good, lasting clothing and sturdy footwear, adding that she had nursed her mother for three years before Mrs. Moore passed away due to the gravity of her illness. Seeing there was also a space for Tastes, Likes, and Dislikes, Iris wrote that she enjoyed reading a good book on quiet evenings with the fire bright in the fireplace. She also added that there was nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread on baking day and that she approved neither of gambling nor swearing. In brackets she also added that it was said that she had a good voice in singing. Once written she felt a little silly about it, but left it since the words were in fact the truth.

Finally, with the application form written, there was the question of her photograph. She had gone to have a few made, three years before, when her mother was still well and their savings still allowed it. Comparing her present appearance in the mirror to that of her favourite picture, Iris found she had not undergone any drastic changes, but looked much the same. In fact, it seemed as if three years had not passed, though she felt it was only right and due to write on the back of the photograph that it was three years since it was taken. And thus she tore the blue slip from the white form to retain a copy of her application as the instructions said. Messrs. Sanders & Jones were intent on retaining their respectably, and would not have any of the ladies have suspicions – and very possibly lose the favour of Women’s Weekly, Iris added silently, remembering how her mother had always said she had a devious little elf inside her who spoke all those sly things. It made Iris smile sadly for a moment. Next to her mother’s warm voice and loving presence, she missed the freedom of speaking her mind the most. Now she had to make her little comments silently, to herself, and not even show with her eyes what she was thinking, for Mrs. Rose and her friends seemed to understand very well what they were saying. Finally, Iris slipped the form and the photograph into the provided envelope, added the stamp, and sent it all that evening, wondering if and hoping sincerely she did the right thing.

June 20, 2016May 16, 2020

Hello, you lovely people. I know I’ve been neglecting this space rather cruelly, but I finally, finally found the time to experiment again. The following is an attempt – really, just that – at historical fiction. I have no idea where it’s going, so bear with me. This is the first part, there is more to come, and I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining. Merci for reading!
j.d.

Pacific Northwest, 1885

It was a Friday afternoon in late fall. Iris Moore gingerly stepped out onto the planks of Riverton station’s platform and found herself in the middle of a hurrying crowd. The steam of the enormous black engine rose high, billowing above the busy bustle around her: families reuniting, men of business hurrying along, loggers shouldering their travelling sacks, filing out in groups of twos and threes; students returning from their term, wearing fine suits and carrying valises, greeted enthusiastically by younger siblings and hugged warmly by their mothers. One, no, two had their fathers to meet them with a warm handshake and a proud slap on their young backs.

The station itself was far larger than expected, with runners in brass-buttoned blue uniforms. There was a waiting hall that was slowly emptying, while more and more people boarded the train. Iris thanked the boy who had taken her trunk and rolled it to one side of the wide station’s platform. She tipped him a little more than usual, she knew the thing was heavy. The bustle around her continued unimpeded – the talk of the people, the din of the street, the hiss and billow of steam from the engine, all formed to a noisy whole that left Iris feeling a little lost.

From what she had seen of Riverton before the giant pistons came to a screeching halt, the town was not what she had thought, a small cluster of houses with maybe a main street and a few side lanes. No, Riverton was a large town on the verge of blooming into a new city. On the last few miles to the station, Iris had seen construction sites and busy roads, large mansions higher up in the hills, and the jumble of innumerable roofs and chimneys down in the valley. She had expected to be in the middle of nowhere, only to see that Riverton was very much somewhere, busy with people coming home or leaving for new destinations. Everyone seemed to have someone waiting for them or a place to go, all except Iris, who stood next to her large travelling trunk, wondering yet again if her clever plan had been all that wise after all.

It had been a matter of quiet desperation. Iris could no longer stay in the city she had known as her home all her life. With her mother dead, and hardly any skills except a little education, housekeeping, and nursing to call her own, Iris had had no choice than to search for a means to provide for herself. To work at a hospital would have required a more thorough training, and she did not have the means to attend a nursing school. The Moores had never been a wealthy household, though the monthly sum her father used to send from the various ports of the world had always been a steady income, guaranteeing a simple yet wholesome life. At the age of seven, however, a month before he was to take leave, Captain Isa Moore drowned in a storm out at sea, and Iris and her mother were left to themselves in the small house on Maple Street. Since she knew her father mostly out of letters her mother read to her and trinkets he sent from faraway places, it was not difficult for Iris to continue as she was, telling herself that her father had reached a port that was too far away to send letters from, but otherwise lived and prospered. To her mother this was not so, nor did it change after the first year of mourning. As a consequence, Iris grew up in a house of ever-present melancholy, though Mrs. Moore had many well-meaning neighbours and friends.

They lived a quiet life, what with the widow’s pension and Mrs. Moore’s position as a teacher in the local school, making their staple supplies always affordable, and a few small luxuries very delightful. Life in Maple Street was not extravagant, yet to Iris it was complete. She accomplished her schooling in St. James School for Young Ladies by the help of a small inheritance from a spritey grand-aunt who thought a young woman should be well educated. To this grand-aunt, whom Iris had never met, St. James was a perfect place for her niece’s daughter, since it was a school lead by nuns and thus could hardly be a place of the blight of the land known as ‘modern vices’. (What those were Iris did not know exactly, but she wasn’t one to ask).

Iris lived with the other seventy girls of St. James on the premises during the week and returned home on the weekends. By the time she finished school, she was considered a right young lady with excellent manners, a sturdy education, and the kind of credentials which would find her a place as a school teacher in hardly any time at all. With the help of Principle Majors who headed the elementary school her own mother taught in, Iris became a private tutor to the two Whitney girls, young spoilt daughters of a wealthy salesmen. The two girls could be very unruly when they wanted to be, but due to their mother’s good sense they thankfully had a knowledge of discipline far enough to allow Iris to teach them how to read, write, add sums, play the piano, and sing a few songs that pleased their father greatly. Iris had been in the choir when at school and was considered to have a good strong voice, though she would never be a soprano, her alto was too deep. It did not matter much to Iris as long as she could stand in the lines and sing with the others. To her that was the most heart-felt prayer she could think of. As for her piano lessons, she enjoyed Mozart and a little Schubert, and played them to the delight of her mother and their friends. In her private hours, when no one but her mother was at home, she would play etudes, vales, and nocturnes from that young Frenchman whose name she always forgot, dramatic, melancholy strains that tore at your heartstrings and made Iris think of the poems her teachers had called ‘unsuitable for young ladies’.

All went well until Mrs. Moore fell ill one winter, not long after Iris turned twenty. What had started as a small cough turned out to be near-fatal pneumonia, which almost robbed Iris of her only parent, yet Mrs. Moore saw it through, though she remained very weak from the long sickness and never regained her strength again. Iris spent the following three years tutoring the Whitney girls and tending to her mother, who was finally too ill to teach a large gaggle of children and so had to stay home. The cut in their income was not so sorely felt at first, since both had lived frugally and laid aside enough for the first months to be as usual. Yet Mrs. Moore’s sickness became worse when the heat of the summer covered the city like an impenetrable dome, and doctor’s appointments and medicines rapidly diminished their savings.

Mrs. Moore had asked Iris to stop trying. If this continued, Iris would have nothing left to live on when she finally died, (Mrs. Moore spoke of her death with such chilling certainty that in turns it made Iris angry or want to cry), and so she maintained that it was best to simply let her pass away in peace, she could not bear the thought of leaving Iris penniless. Iris assured her repeatedly that as a teacher she could hardly be that, and so continued tutoring in the mornings and tending to her mother for the rest of the day, deeply grateful for their neighbour Mrs. Rose who came in the forenoon to make sure all was well.

Yet it was all to no avail. On a Sunday morning in the spring of the third year after that long winter of pneumonia, Jane Ellen Moore passed away and Iris was left all to herself. She had no siblings, she did not know any of her father’s family, and her mother had no one else save an elder brother who left the house at sixteen and never wrote nor returned again. Thus, Iris was on her own, and living in a large city with hardly any means and no real possibilities to earn a living in a respectable way, Iris soon found herself in a predicament. By the time Mrs. Moore passed away, they had had to sell the small house on Maple Street in order to pay the doctor’s bills, and moved into a small apartment in a busy part of town, where carriages and streetcars rolled by noisily, and it was never wise to leave the windows open if you wanted to have some peace. The Whitney’s had moved to New York by then, since Mr. Whitney’s business had grown so large as to ‘warrant a more fortuitous homestead’, and Iris was surprised and dismayed to see that there was no other school or place for tutorship that wished for her skills. Few families wanted their young boys taught by a young lady who ‘would not know what young chaps needed to learn’, and the other families did not think it necessary to teach their daughters more than the elementaries of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which their governesses could teach them as well.

Added to this unpleasant turn, Iris more often than not found herself faced with proposals for marriage than earnest propositions for a place of teaching. It seemed that everyone expected her to find a husband. As long as her mother lived, a widow who had no other means to support herself and her daughter than to be a schoolmarm, it was well and good for Iris to be a tutor and support her mother who was fortunate to have such a loving and helpful child. Yet now, as a young solitary woman, Iris realized that many thought it suspiciously independent of her that she would not join Mrs. Rose’s tea-parties, where Mrs. Rose’s lady friends talked favourably of their own sons and nephews or those sons and nephews of their acquaintance. Soon Iris found it better not to visit Mrs. Rose for tea so as not to be confronted by the quiet indignation of her lady friends, who thought it rather proud of a young penniless girl to not consider marriage to their well-off sons. With one thing and the other, Iris found herself fairly alone not even ten weeks after her mother’s funeral.

She lived as frugally a possible, yet all her saving could not keep the day away when no more money would be left and she would have to leave the small room she rented after moving out of the apartment she had shared with her mother, since the funeral had required most of what savings she still had left. There she was, living in one of the busiest, noisiest parts of town, working for a pittance as a shop assistant to Mr. Emerson, who already had a shop assistant, Carter. Then there was the fact that Mr. Emerson thought it unwise for a young lady to waste her time behind counters when she could much better become a wife and use her skills for her own household and children. Mr. Emerson said that if he gave her too much pay she would become too used to working, which was not very well for a respectable young lady, and thus the low income would eventually force her to be wise and find a husband.

‘You’re a pretty young lady, Miss Moore,’ he would say, ‘why are you trying to spoil your good looks with working? Mrs. Emerson knows a few fine young men who would be more than happy to meet you,’ he would add, which Iris was always quick to gainsay, explaining she was still in mourning for her mother and could not think of such things as marriage yet.