we have actual story now!
Nov. 5th, 2011 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieLuisa and Mrs O’Donnell come to the house on Saturday - Luisa to look after James and Aimee and William, and Mrs O’Donnell because a housekeeper’s work is never done when the house and family are the size of the Godwins’ - and there is also a gardener, Mr West, who takes care of the bushes and trees in front of the house and in the courtyard. Sometimes Mrs Godwin will entertain friends and society ladies and occasionally the wives of Mr Godwin’s business partners at the house, and on those days, the little Godwins are encouraged to stay out from underfoot. William does not consider himself a little Godwin any more, but Luisa is supposed to watch out for him as much as James and Aimee. Con always seems to have his own things to do, unless any of the society ladies bring their daughters, and on those occasions he tries to work himself into any conversation, flirting with them the same way he flirts with Luisa. Sometimes Mrs Godwin tolerates this, and sometimes she has to ask him politely but firmly to leave the ladies alone.
Today she is out of the house, and Mr Godwin is off seeing to business, and Julia has a surprise for James – two dollars and the promise of a moving picture about pirates showing downtown.
“This is a secret,” she whispers to him. “Say I want to walk to Central Park after lunch and get some exercise.” Their mother will never argue about her daughters getting some exercise. “And instead, we will take the streetcar downtown.”
“Why don’t we ask Mr Sewell to drive us?” James asks. “He can keep a secret.”
James knows this because Mr Sewell once caught him trying to hide two of William’s little metal toy soldiers under the front seat of the car, and has never told anyone.
“You don’t want to take the streetcar? It will be an adventure.”
“We aren’t allowed.”
“We aren’t allowed to go to the cinema by ourselves, either. If Luisa thinks we went to the park, she won’t know to worry about us, or to tell Momma. I would never deliberately get you in trouble, James. That is Con’s job.” She grins. Her face is lit up with excitement, but even if it were not, James has always followed her into adventures, and she has not gotten them into irretrievable trouble yet. Besides, she has promised pirates.
He is impressed at how easily she lies to Luisa, and again to Mrs O’Donnell who catches them leaving. They wave to Mr West, who is trimming bushes on the side of the house, and as soon as they are out of view of the house, Julia grabs James’ hand and the two of them run the few blocks to the street where they can catch the streetcar.
“Manon Lloyd at school told me which car to take,” Julia says, as they walk down the sidewalk towards the streetcar stop. James has been out in the city enough times that all the people and cars and the occasional horse do not bother him. But he doesn’t let go of Julia’s hand. He has never been on a streetcar and has only been to the cinema once before, and that was to see a Charlie Chaplin film with Nathaniel and Lucas and William, and not in the middle of the day with just Julia, when everyone else thinks they are walking to Central Park. He is very excited, and only a little bit apprehensive.
The streetcar, when it finally comes, is full of people. Julia gives him some coins to pay for his fare himself, and they have to stand because all the seats are taken. James tries not to stare at the people, so many of them so different from the people he normally sees. He can tell from their clothes and hats that some of them are workers, like Luisa or Mrs O’Donnell or Mr West, but there are also three girls dressed similarly to Julia and so possiby from the same kind of family. One of them smiles and winks at him. He tugs on Julia’s hand.
“What?” she asks, bending down a little so she can hear him.
“Look,” he says, pointing with his free hand to the three girls. “One of them winked at me.”
“She’s flirting with you.” James looks up at his sister, surprised, and she grins down at him. “Sometimes girls flirt too.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe,” she says coyly. “Look for Fourteenth Street – that is where our stop is and we have to get off.”
The streetcar driver calls out their stop, so there is no worry about missing it, and they push off the streetcar the same way they pushed on. The three girls are still on it when it drives away. James thinks he can see one of them waving to him as it leaves.
“This is Union Square,” Julia tells James, gesturing around them. “Many, many years ago, this was the center of Manhattan. This is where the captains of industry had their homes.”
“Like Father,” James says.
“Like Father. Where we live was farmland. Imagine that. We live on a farm.” She laughs. “Can you imagine sheep grazing in the courtyard?”
“Yes.” Now it is James’ turn to grin. Mr Godwin’s friend with the house on Long Island and the yacht also had a field with sheep on it, soft-looking wooly creatures with placid black faces. He said they kept the grass trimmed, and his wife, who had come from England, said they reminded her of home and kept her from being too homesick. James wanted to bring one back to Manhattan with him, and when his mother asked where would they put it? and wouldn’t it miss its friends and family? he said they could keep in the courtyard where it could nibble the grass, and if it wanted to try something new, he would put it on a leash and take it to the park.
He was voted down, even after Aimee piped up that she wanted a sheep too, and for part of the trip home, Mrs Godwin tried to convince Mr Godwin to at least get the children a dog. Aimee said she’d rather have a sheep. William said they should get a sheepdog like the dog in Peter Pan, a friendly hairy creature who could sleep on his bed and keep his feet warm at night, and Julia said no, a Saint Bernard, because she had recently learned about the dogs who were trained to find people lost in the mountains of Switzerland. Con suggested a herd of small dogs, with a shepherd dog to keep them in line. James thought a dog might be nice, but he still wanted a sheep.
One of Mrs Godwin’s friends has a little lapdog, a long-haired pop-eyed Pekingese called Ming, and every time Mrs Godwin has the friend over to the house, she brings her dog. Con cannot stand it, and will tease it if he gets the chance. James has no opinion on such a small hairy dog, but he does not think it is fair to the dog that Con teases it.
“James, look,” Julia says now, pointing to an older lady, older than Mrs Malcolm, who is wearing a green hat with tall black feathers and walking with four little Pekingese dogs on leashes. James watches the dogs waddle down the sidewalk as the lady stalks behind them in her pointy shoes. “She looks like Mrs Albrecht.”
“Do you think they know each other?” he asks, his eyes on the dogs. They look so funny, the way they waddle from side to side.
“Perhaps. Let’s find the cinema.” She takes his hand and leads him down the street to the theater, which is lit up with round white bulbs and displays painted signs proclaiming that it is showing The Millionaire Pirate, starring Monroe Salisbury and Ruth Clifford, with live accompaniment and a new chapter of The Masked Rider preceding the feature.
“What is The Masked Rider?” James asks. “Is that about pirates too?”
“It’s a Western. See, the hero is dressed as a cowboy, and there’s a cactus in the background.”
Julia buys two tickets and they go inside. The theater is big and brightly decorated and carpeted with plush red carpets. There is another sign inside advertising the feature as well as The Masked Rider, which Julia tells James is a serial, which means that every week, the theater shows a new chapter until the whole story has been told
“The same as reading a chapter of a book each week,” she says, “rather than reading the whole thing all at once. Manon told me and Honey Langston the story at school on Thursday. This should only be the second chapter.”
An usher shows them to their seats, which are upholstered in red, the same as the carpet in the lobby, and Julia shares the story of The Masked Rider as they wait for the movie to start. James suspects that she is embellishing what Manon Lloyd told her, because Julia cannot tell a story straight through with adding something to it.
They have had lunch but James is starting to get hungry anyway when the lights dim and the curtains in front of the theater pull back to reveal the screen. There is a piano in front of the seats, down by the screen, and just as the lights start to dim, a man comes out of a door in the side wall and sits on the piano bench.
There are a couple of newsreels first, showing the King of England and a man who the title card says is the governor of Massachusetts.
“That is where Boston is,” Julia whispers to James, “where Luisa’s friend Antonio lives.”
“I know that,” James whispers back. “We learned all the state capitals in school. And anyway, Luisa told me where Boston is.”
“Well. Clearly you are very educated.” She ruffles James’ hair.
She is quiet during The Masked Rider, except for once when James says that the man on screen looks like Mr Sewell, but the piano player fills the silence. James does not know why he didn’t remember the serial from the one time other time he went to the movie theater, He wishes he could hear what the characters are saying, because sometimes he can’t read the title cards fast enough, but he likes the music and the story is full of action and adventure and dastardly deeds, and when it is over, he asks Julia if she will bring him back next week so he can see the next chapter.
“Maybe we can convince Luisa to come too,” he says, adding “And Aimee and William” as an afterthought.
“You can ask her,” Julia says. “She might say yes. But don’t tell her we went today without her knowing, or we will both be in trouble.”
“Then how can I ask her?”
But The Millionaire Pirate starts right then, so he does not get an answer.
The movie is about Jean Lafitte, who Julia tells him was a real pirate who lived in New Orleans, very powerful and wealthy and successful. “And violent and bloody,” she adds in an undertone. “The ghosts of his enemies still haunt all the corners of New Orleans.”
James watches the screen, transfixed, and when the movie is over he announces that he wants to go to the West Indies, where the story is set, and New Orleans, because Julia mentioned it, and be a pirate there too.
“Those are wild places,” Julia says. “You will have to learn French.”
“Mr Van der Waal is already teaching us Latin.”
“You don’t want to be a pirate on the high seas?”
“Aren’t the West Indies in the sea?”
“They are,” Julia concedes. “This is true. Are you hungry? I think we should get an ice cream before we go home.”
They find a soda fountain two blocks away and sit at the counter and order a sundae, and James kicks his legs against the stool and chatters on about the movie and Julia tells him more stories about Jean Lafitte and the kinds of people who live in New Orleans as they eat their ice cream.
“This was the best Saturday ever,” he confides on the streetcar home. He got to ride a streetcar – twice – and attend the cinema and eat ice cream.
“It was a good day, wasn’t it.” Julia looks pleased. James impulsively kisses her on the cheek and she giggles. “I hope Luisa think we were just walking a long way, or perhaps saw someone we know and stopped to talk. I do not want to get her in trouble.”
“I thought you said we would be the ones in trouble.”
“But she is supposed to be looking after you, and she cannot do that if I spirit you away to the dark reaches of Manhattan.” She twists her mouth up in an exaggerated semblance of deep thought. “No, I think she trusts me, and she has enough with Aimee and William and Con.” She giggles again. “Aimee is the easiest child in all of history, but you know how difficult William is.” James giggles again, getting the joke. Sometimes he thinks Luisa has the easiest job of all the staff, because he and Aimee are good children and William can look after himself.
As it turns out, Luisa has only just started to worry by the time they come home. She knows that sometimes Julia can be distracted from her intended task, and the weather is fine and there is no worry they will be caught in the rain, as has happened before. But Luisa was still not expecting them to be gone so long, even for a walk around the park in good weather.
“We can do it again next Saturday,” James tells Julia. “Luisa trusts you. Can I stil ask her to come?”
“As long as you do not let on that I lied to her today and took you downtown.”
So James asks Luisa if she would take him to see a motion picture about pirates next Saturday, with a man playing the piano and a chapter of a serial before the feature. She says she will have to ask Mrs Godwin, but if Mrs Godwin says it is ok, then perhaps they will all go. James has to resist telling her the story of the Masked Rider beforehand, but he can keep a secret, and if his mother says yes and Luisa takes them to the theater next weekend, he will catch her up then.
words: 2453
total words: 7100
today's quickie research: top movies in 1919, serials. (i totally winged it about the streetcar, the movie theater, and the soda fountain.) the masked rider and the millionaire pirate do exist, or did in 1919.
Today she is out of the house, and Mr Godwin is off seeing to business, and Julia has a surprise for James – two dollars and the promise of a moving picture about pirates showing downtown.
“This is a secret,” she whispers to him. “Say I want to walk to Central Park after lunch and get some exercise.” Their mother will never argue about her daughters getting some exercise. “And instead, we will take the streetcar downtown.”
“Why don’t we ask Mr Sewell to drive us?” James asks. “He can keep a secret.”
James knows this because Mr Sewell once caught him trying to hide two of William’s little metal toy soldiers under the front seat of the car, and has never told anyone.
“You don’t want to take the streetcar? It will be an adventure.”
“We aren’t allowed.”
“We aren’t allowed to go to the cinema by ourselves, either. If Luisa thinks we went to the park, she won’t know to worry about us, or to tell Momma. I would never deliberately get you in trouble, James. That is Con’s job.” She grins. Her face is lit up with excitement, but even if it were not, James has always followed her into adventures, and she has not gotten them into irretrievable trouble yet. Besides, she has promised pirates.
He is impressed at how easily she lies to Luisa, and again to Mrs O’Donnell who catches them leaving. They wave to Mr West, who is trimming bushes on the side of the house, and as soon as they are out of view of the house, Julia grabs James’ hand and the two of them run the few blocks to the street where they can catch the streetcar.
“Manon Lloyd at school told me which car to take,” Julia says, as they walk down the sidewalk towards the streetcar stop. James has been out in the city enough times that all the people and cars and the occasional horse do not bother him. But he doesn’t let go of Julia’s hand. He has never been on a streetcar and has only been to the cinema once before, and that was to see a Charlie Chaplin film with Nathaniel and Lucas and William, and not in the middle of the day with just Julia, when everyone else thinks they are walking to Central Park. He is very excited, and only a little bit apprehensive.
The streetcar, when it finally comes, is full of people. Julia gives him some coins to pay for his fare himself, and they have to stand because all the seats are taken. James tries not to stare at the people, so many of them so different from the people he normally sees. He can tell from their clothes and hats that some of them are workers, like Luisa or Mrs O’Donnell or Mr West, but there are also three girls dressed similarly to Julia and so possiby from the same kind of family. One of them smiles and winks at him. He tugs on Julia’s hand.
“What?” she asks, bending down a little so she can hear him.
“Look,” he says, pointing with his free hand to the three girls. “One of them winked at me.”
“She’s flirting with you.” James looks up at his sister, surprised, and she grins down at him. “Sometimes girls flirt too.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe,” she says coyly. “Look for Fourteenth Street – that is where our stop is and we have to get off.”
The streetcar driver calls out their stop, so there is no worry about missing it, and they push off the streetcar the same way they pushed on. The three girls are still on it when it drives away. James thinks he can see one of them waving to him as it leaves.
“This is Union Square,” Julia tells James, gesturing around them. “Many, many years ago, this was the center of Manhattan. This is where the captains of industry had their homes.”
“Like Father,” James says.
“Like Father. Where we live was farmland. Imagine that. We live on a farm.” She laughs. “Can you imagine sheep grazing in the courtyard?”
“Yes.” Now it is James’ turn to grin. Mr Godwin’s friend with the house on Long Island and the yacht also had a field with sheep on it, soft-looking wooly creatures with placid black faces. He said they kept the grass trimmed, and his wife, who had come from England, said they reminded her of home and kept her from being too homesick. James wanted to bring one back to Manhattan with him, and when his mother asked where would they put it? and wouldn’t it miss its friends and family? he said they could keep in the courtyard where it could nibble the grass, and if it wanted to try something new, he would put it on a leash and take it to the park.
He was voted down, even after Aimee piped up that she wanted a sheep too, and for part of the trip home, Mrs Godwin tried to convince Mr Godwin to at least get the children a dog. Aimee said she’d rather have a sheep. William said they should get a sheepdog like the dog in Peter Pan, a friendly hairy creature who could sleep on his bed and keep his feet warm at night, and Julia said no, a Saint Bernard, because she had recently learned about the dogs who were trained to find people lost in the mountains of Switzerland. Con suggested a herd of small dogs, with a shepherd dog to keep them in line. James thought a dog might be nice, but he still wanted a sheep.
One of Mrs Godwin’s friends has a little lapdog, a long-haired pop-eyed Pekingese called Ming, and every time Mrs Godwin has the friend over to the house, she brings her dog. Con cannot stand it, and will tease it if he gets the chance. James has no opinion on such a small hairy dog, but he does not think it is fair to the dog that Con teases it.
“James, look,” Julia says now, pointing to an older lady, older than Mrs Malcolm, who is wearing a green hat with tall black feathers and walking with four little Pekingese dogs on leashes. James watches the dogs waddle down the sidewalk as the lady stalks behind them in her pointy shoes. “She looks like Mrs Albrecht.”
“Do you think they know each other?” he asks, his eyes on the dogs. They look so funny, the way they waddle from side to side.
“Perhaps. Let’s find the cinema.” She takes his hand and leads him down the street to the theater, which is lit up with round white bulbs and displays painted signs proclaiming that it is showing The Millionaire Pirate, starring Monroe Salisbury and Ruth Clifford, with live accompaniment and a new chapter of The Masked Rider preceding the feature.
“What is The Masked Rider?” James asks. “Is that about pirates too?”
“It’s a Western. See, the hero is dressed as a cowboy, and there’s a cactus in the background.”
Julia buys two tickets and they go inside. The theater is big and brightly decorated and carpeted with plush red carpets. There is another sign inside advertising the feature as well as The Masked Rider, which Julia tells James is a serial, which means that every week, the theater shows a new chapter until the whole story has been told
“The same as reading a chapter of a book each week,” she says, “rather than reading the whole thing all at once. Manon told me and Honey Langston the story at school on Thursday. This should only be the second chapter.”
An usher shows them to their seats, which are upholstered in red, the same as the carpet in the lobby, and Julia shares the story of The Masked Rider as they wait for the movie to start. James suspects that she is embellishing what Manon Lloyd told her, because Julia cannot tell a story straight through with adding something to it.
They have had lunch but James is starting to get hungry anyway when the lights dim and the curtains in front of the theater pull back to reveal the screen. There is a piano in front of the seats, down by the screen, and just as the lights start to dim, a man comes out of a door in the side wall and sits on the piano bench.
There are a couple of newsreels first, showing the King of England and a man who the title card says is the governor of Massachusetts.
“That is where Boston is,” Julia whispers to James, “where Luisa’s friend Antonio lives.”
“I know that,” James whispers back. “We learned all the state capitals in school. And anyway, Luisa told me where Boston is.”
“Well. Clearly you are very educated.” She ruffles James’ hair.
She is quiet during The Masked Rider, except for once when James says that the man on screen looks like Mr Sewell, but the piano player fills the silence. James does not know why he didn’t remember the serial from the one time other time he went to the movie theater, He wishes he could hear what the characters are saying, because sometimes he can’t read the title cards fast enough, but he likes the music and the story is full of action and adventure and dastardly deeds, and when it is over, he asks Julia if she will bring him back next week so he can see the next chapter.
“Maybe we can convince Luisa to come too,” he says, adding “And Aimee and William” as an afterthought.
“You can ask her,” Julia says. “She might say yes. But don’t tell her we went today without her knowing, or we will both be in trouble.”
“Then how can I ask her?”
But The Millionaire Pirate starts right then, so he does not get an answer.
The movie is about Jean Lafitte, who Julia tells him was a real pirate who lived in New Orleans, very powerful and wealthy and successful. “And violent and bloody,” she adds in an undertone. “The ghosts of his enemies still haunt all the corners of New Orleans.”
James watches the screen, transfixed, and when the movie is over he announces that he wants to go to the West Indies, where the story is set, and New Orleans, because Julia mentioned it, and be a pirate there too.
“Those are wild places,” Julia says. “You will have to learn French.”
“Mr Van der Waal is already teaching us Latin.”
“You don’t want to be a pirate on the high seas?”
“Aren’t the West Indies in the sea?”
“They are,” Julia concedes. “This is true. Are you hungry? I think we should get an ice cream before we go home.”
They find a soda fountain two blocks away and sit at the counter and order a sundae, and James kicks his legs against the stool and chatters on about the movie and Julia tells him more stories about Jean Lafitte and the kinds of people who live in New Orleans as they eat their ice cream.
“This was the best Saturday ever,” he confides on the streetcar home. He got to ride a streetcar – twice – and attend the cinema and eat ice cream.
“It was a good day, wasn’t it.” Julia looks pleased. James impulsively kisses her on the cheek and she giggles. “I hope Luisa think we were just walking a long way, or perhaps saw someone we know and stopped to talk. I do not want to get her in trouble.”
“I thought you said we would be the ones in trouble.”
“But she is supposed to be looking after you, and she cannot do that if I spirit you away to the dark reaches of Manhattan.” She twists her mouth up in an exaggerated semblance of deep thought. “No, I think she trusts me, and she has enough with Aimee and William and Con.” She giggles again. “Aimee is the easiest child in all of history, but you know how difficult William is.” James giggles again, getting the joke. Sometimes he thinks Luisa has the easiest job of all the staff, because he and Aimee are good children and William can look after himself.
As it turns out, Luisa has only just started to worry by the time they come home. She knows that sometimes Julia can be distracted from her intended task, and the weather is fine and there is no worry they will be caught in the rain, as has happened before. But Luisa was still not expecting them to be gone so long, even for a walk around the park in good weather.
“We can do it again next Saturday,” James tells Julia. “Luisa trusts you. Can I stil ask her to come?”
“As long as you do not let on that I lied to her today and took you downtown.”
So James asks Luisa if she would take him to see a motion picture about pirates next Saturday, with a man playing the piano and a chapter of a serial before the feature. She says she will have to ask Mrs Godwin, but if Mrs Godwin says it is ok, then perhaps they will all go. James has to resist telling her the story of the Masked Rider beforehand, but he can keep a secret, and if his mother says yes and Luisa takes them to the theater next weekend, he will catch her up then.
words: 2453
total words: 7100
today's quickie research: top movies in 1919, serials. (i totally winged it about the streetcar, the movie theater, and the soda fountain.) the masked rider and the millionaire pirate do exist, or did in 1919.
