Chapter X

In 1910, when Yvette was twenty-four, she became engaged to marry MacDougal Adams. Already MacDougal was sales manager for the Rex Suit Company, and he was doing well. He had grown into a handsome fellow who would be quite fat, one day, if he didn’t diet carefully. He was crisply black-haired, ruddy-faced. He made friends easily and was jovial most of the time. He had no subtleties, but Yvette was not the one to notice. She considered him very modern, and liked the way he “caught on to things.” Her friends—and the announcement Yvette mailed to the newspapers—spoke of the affair as “a childhood romance,” as indeed it was. It pleased the Roses and the Adams, too. They gave a reception at a hall on 125th Street to celebrate the occasion, each of the families inviting special friends, with Dorothy and little Helen Nacker to pass flowers to the guests. There was a band behind artificial palms, and waiters in white aprons passed refreshments. Yvette wore a dress of pink and Carolyn wore yellow. Carolyn didn’t think the party fine enough, and Mannie and Dorothy didn’t like it much, either. The rest of the family thought it a successful affair.

Mrs. Rose, Yvette and Carolyn spent the following weeks shopping. Yvette had to have a complete trousseau, starting with table linens and ending with silk stockings. Three months later Yvette and MacDougal were married at the Waldorf with Carolyn and Maurice Adams as attendants. Only the most intimate friends were invited to the elaborate banquet which followed, though later there was an “informal reception” with much wine. MacDougal had just bought an automobile—black, though Yvette would have preferred a gayer colour—and, after a short Atlantic City honeymoon the young couple took a new and elaborate apartment in Central Park West and settled down, with two maids, to domesticity.

“Ain’t it grand, Papa?” Mrs. Rose had said to her husband after their first call on the young couple. And even Rose had to agree that Yvette was getting all that could be expected.

Carolyn was “the young lady of the family,” now. She was not as easily satisfied as Yvette had been. She called Yvette’s crowd “loudly vulgar,” though she was a trifle loud, herself, at times. She raised eyebrows and drew away when fate included her in her sister’s parties. She was glad when her sister married—now she could entertain her loud friends in her own home. Maybe Yvette would even tone down a little; she laughed too loudly, and her terrible taste in clothes! Her mother talked loudly, too, except when she tried very hard to remember—and it was terrible the way she shrieked and sing-songed when she grew excited—but at least you could remonstrate with her.

The Harlem apartment didn’t suit Carolyn at all. Here she was, out of school, nearly twenty—and living in—Harlem. She had gone to a series of morning lectures at one of the hotels and one of the lectures had been on furniture—it seemed all of the things in the Harlem apartment were entirely wrong. Carolyn knew this was true, too. Hadn’t she been to other homes, where people knew things? They were rich and had one maid—and she didn’t know how to wait on the table—and the family treated her as if she were one of them. And Irving talked back to his father, rather impudently, even when company was there, and the car was a sight—she was ashamed to use it. The least they could have was a new car and a chauffeur.

Irving agreed with all of Carolyn’s criticisms, excepting those which concerned himself. He was twenty-three, why shouldn’t he have things nicer? Dorothy, going on fourteen, also found the Harlem house distasteful.

“A terrible neighbourhood,” said Dorothy, who became Dorothea, that year. “It’s too far from school and we do need a new car. I’m ashamed to tell any one where I live. I want a big room and my own bath, so I can ask girls to stay all night, if I want to.”

Rose sighed, said the family would break him and times were hard. Mrs. Rose sighed, too. Still, Harlem wasn’t such a friendly neighbourhood—the other couldn’t be worse. And with only one girl there was too much for her to do. If they had a man to drive the car and a cook, maybe—

Carolyn went house-hunting alone. She said she’d take the others with her “when she found something.” Two weeks later she took her mother and Dorothea to see the new apartment. It was a foregone conclusion with Carolyn that they would take it—just the formality of mailing the lease for her father’s signature.

The apartment was on Riverside Drive, in a huge building of cream-coloured brick. At the door was a negro uniformed in dark green, and another similarly clad attended the mirrored elevator. The halls had Oriental rugs and were lit and draped with an expensiveness that suited even Carolyn. Of course it was pretty far out on the Drive—but it looked rich—and living on the Drive was rather grand, at that. Mrs. Rose was speechless at first, but later the apartment seemed quite satisfying. She liked the ornateness, the grandeur—it was even finer than Yvette’s, than any of her friends. Why shouldn’t it be, with Abe a partner in a big factory and all—?

The woodwork of the apartment was white enamel. There were little panels in the living room, waiting to be papered, and the dining-room had a white enamelled plate rail. The lighting fixtures were of the new “inverted” style, on heavy brass chains ending with carved brass holders of white frosted globes. There were French doors of mahogany leading into the living-room and dining-room, a huge butler’s pantry with numerous shelves, a kitchen with a big hooded range and immense white sink, large bedrooms, four baths.

“If—if your Papa will pay for it,” Mrs. Rose admitted weakly.

“Oh, he’ll pay,” said Carolyn, “why shouldn’t he—a rich man like him?”

When the men of the family came to see the apartment Irving pronounced it “immense.” Mr. Rose looked at the apartment, saw the library that he could have for his own, the big bedroom and bath—and gave in with unexpectedly little persuasion. After all—his friends were living well—why shouldn’t he? He was making money—the family might as well spend it. Didn’t the way you live show how well you were doing? Not that he was making so much, of course, but, with Yvette married—if Carolyn wanted the apartment.

Mannie and Dorothea were rather indifferent. Still, Mannie was in prep school and cared most about books—even writing a poem occasionally. He was eighteen. At fourteen, Dorothea didn’t care about details as long as they were moving. Her new room was nice and big. Still, they ought to have a new car—Dorothea was quite pouty over the old one.

Carolyn took charge of the furnishings of the new apartment. Mrs. Rose, with uplifted hands, declared her ignorance of periods “and such nonsense,” but begged her daughter not to spend too much money. “You know your Papa. There is a limit even with him.”

Irving gave a long-winded dissertation about what to get and told about a fine apartment he had visited, farther down on the drive—two girls he knew, their father was a criminal lawyer. Carolyn didn’t listen very closely. She knew what she wanted.

Accompanied by her most intimate friend, Eloise Morton, daughter of S. G. Morton, the box people (both of Eloise’s parents had been born in America), Carolyn visited a number of shops. She called the stores where Yvette traded “middle class,” but she was afraid of the decorating shops and called the things in the window “junk.”

“You might like that old stuff,” she said to Eloise, “but I can’t see anything to it. Old chairs, stiff and funny—a hundred dollars apiece and then a fake, probably. A whole room full of that doesn’t look like anything. I like things that show their full value, that you can tell cost a lot of money.”

Eloise agreed that her friend had the right idea.

Carolyn didn’t allow any mere furniture clerk to suggest or dictate to her. Hadn’t she seen a lot of fine homes? Didn’t she go to every new show in town and look especially at the stage settings? Hadn’t she heard a furniture lecture? Who could advise her?

She didn’t want her mother with her, she’d “simply spoil things if she started to talk.” Carolyn and Eloise, alone, could give an impression of taste, elegance and riches.

Carolyn decided on Adam furniture for the living room. If the ghosts of the brothers Adam groaned a bit Carolyn was too busy to hear. She liked “sets” for the living rooms—didn’t every one have them?—so she chose a great davenport of mahogany with cane sides and back, motifs slightly after some of the Adam designs scattered over the woodwork. The upholstery was rose velour. There were two huge chairs of similar design, one a rocking chair. Other chairs were of cane and mahogany, one a Venetian, one a fireside. There was a great oblong table, too, that Carolyn knew showed good judgment, for it was of “dull antique mahogany.” It, too, bore motifs of the house of Adam. There was a floor lamp with a rose shade and two table lamps to match and several pieces of “stylish” painted furniture, factory made. Carolyn looked with scorn on the little rugs that had seemed so fine a few years ago. She chose now an immense Oriental in rose and tan for the living room and a Chinese rug in dark blue to combine with the intricately carved Queen Anne furniture of the dining-room.

There were elaborately patterned filet lace curtains throughout the house. Before this Mrs. Rose had always hemmed and hung the curtains. Now Carolyn gave orders for them. The over-drapes and portières were of rose velour, heavily lined, and above the windows were elaborate valances, edged with fringe and wide gold braid. There were blue velour curtains in the dining-room.

In the bedrooms Carolyn’s imagination had full play. Her parents’ room was in mahogany with twin poster beds. Her own room was in ivory, cane inset. Dorothea’s was white enamelled, painted with blue scenes.

For the walls of the living-room, between the panelling, Carolyn chose a scenic paper in grey. On this were to be hung elaborate oil paintings in scalloped gold frames: “A Scene at Twilight,” “The Fisherman’s Return.” In the dining-room the paper was in tapestry effect, red and blue fruit and flowers.

The family moved into the new apartment in October, 1911. The moving was simple for the old furniture was to be sold and professional movers attended to the packing of ornaments and dishes.

Mrs. Rose and Irving were impressed with the effects wrought by Carolyn’s taste and her father’s money, but it did not take the family long to settle down to the pleasures of life that Riverside Drive opened to them.