THE SHOEMAKER
PROLOGUE.
In one of the small side streets that end in the Bowery, on the East Side, is a row of small and dilapidated buildings, which once, in the early days of New York, were the dwellings of fashionable people, but which are now occupied by poor but industrious people. The majority of these houses have some small business carried on in the basement cellars.
The people who occupy the houses above the cellar stores or workshops are mostly of the poor but industrious Hebrews who toil early and late to build up a little business in this land of freedom, a business which is really and truly their own, to have and to hold without persecution or robbery.
The house where Morris Goldberg had found a shelter and a chance to show of what stuff he[4] was made was, if possible, a little more disreputable in appearance than the others in that row, but to him, who had gone through the horrors of the Kishineff massacre, robbed of his all, save his wife and little daughter, it seemed a peaceful haven of delight.
The little destitute family had been assisted to start, in this humble location, by the noble and practical Benevolent Society of the Hebrews in New York, and, though a cellar whose only light came through grated windows or the opened cellar-doors, this seemed to him a palace. Was he not free from persecution? His good wife and little daughter and he were free, free. One must have been a Jew in Russia to know what freedom means.
Morris Goldberg was a shoemaker and plied his humble calling with such patient industry, and such thrift, that after a year of struggle he had proudly paid back the money loaned him, and then he moved his wife and daughter to the back room on the floor above, while he pegged and sewed and smoked and sang at his work.
The daughter grew into a beautiful womanhood, with all the rich coloring of her race, with snowy teeth, thick waving black hair, and beautiful large dark eyes.
She was the loveliest girl in all the neighborhood,[5] with a dainty, graceful figure and a gay, merry soul. Words could not tell how she loved her father; for, after a few years of peace and joy in this land, the mother, who had never recovered from the horrors through which she had passed, died. Her last hours were so sweetly peaceful that the loss to those left behind was more of a chastened sorrow than a poignant grief.
Dora was now sixteen, and matured like the maidens of her race.
The father loved Dora with a brooding tenderness almost womanlike in its intensity, and her little hands held his very heart in their grasp. Nothing she did seemed wrong to him, and everything she wanted, that was in his power to give, she had.
Above all, he was proud of her education, for that had been his first desire. Dora was kept in school when other girls of her age had worked in factories. She kept house for him in the room above the shop, and she was a good, sweet, obedient daughter. What more could a man ask? A business that kept them from want, and something left over every month. No wonder the honest shoemaker sang as he worked in his little shop as he listened to the steps of his daughter above.
2. Olive Harper
Dolores is clearly an idealisation of Harper herself, who, like her main character, managed to overcome severe obstacles to achieve success. Although little-remembered today, Harper enjoyed a considerable degree of fame in her own time. “Olive Harper” was the pen name of Ellen Burrell, who was born in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania on 28 September 1842.2 In 1849, Harper’s father, Albert, immigrated to San Francisco, and shortly thereafter became one of the founders of a settlement that would grow into the city of Oakland (“Oakland News” 16).3 His family joined him there two years later.
Oakland retained a rough and rowdy frontier character throughout Harper’s youth. Occasional gunplay, periodic disease, and dangerous wildlife such as grizzlies and rattlesnakes made life precarious. When Harper was twelve, she and her younger sister contracted diphtheria during an epidemic; her sister did not survive. Harper described herself as the “wildest of a wild lot of children” in the town (Stormy 47). She was a precocious learner and voracious reader who excelled academically, but a fierce intolerance of anything she perceived as hypocritical or snobbish resulted in frequent clashes with fellow students, as well as teachers and other adults in the community.
At age fifteen, against her parent’s wishes, Harper married 42-year-old George Gibson, a business acquaintance of her father’s. As his business enterprises faltered, Gibson sank deeper into alcoholism and became increasingly abusive. Harper sustained herself and her three children through shrewd real-estate dealings and, for a time, through operating a millinery and dressmaking shop. After about fourteen years of marriage, Harper divorced Gibson for “cruel and inhuman treatment” (583). In the midst of divorce proceedings, Harper contracted what she described as “typhoid pneumonia” followed by “severe rheumatism”; complications from these ailments forced her to walk on crutches for the remainder of her life (577). In a memoir written near the end of her life, Harper describes her initial despair:
Can you realize what that all meant? It meant that I, the strongest, most active woman alive, almost, was cut down like this, never to run, walk, dance, climb, work, never to have free use of the splendid strength God gave me, and all this had fallen upon me out of a clear sky …. I went in to the sick bed a strong, young, proud woman, proud of the great strength and powers of endurance beyond that given to the strongest of her sex, at about 27 years old, and came out of it a hopeless cripple at 29. (Stormy 589–91).
Following her divorce, Harper – a single mother with three children to support – decided to pursue a career as a professional writer (Harper, “Will I Ever” 1). Against heavy odds, she met with rapid success and was soon regularly contributing articles and poetry to the Daily Alta California and a variety of other newspapers across the United States (“Lady Journalist” 1). She also became a popular lecturer, known for her outspokenness, her biting humor, and her occasional treatment of erotic themes in her poetry (Cummins 120). Despite, or perhaps because of, her success, Harper was the frequent target of criticism from her male colleagues. For instance, one characterised her prose as “slush and drivel” (“Good Letters” 2), another lamented the “fathomless obscenity” of her verse (The Wasp), and a third offered the gratuitously cruel judgement that her “narrative hobbled horribly, as though it went on crutches” (“Letter from London” 28).
In 1873, the Daily Alta California and the St. Louis Globe dispatched Harper to Europe to report on the Vienna Exhibition as well as the other cities she visited en route (“Woman’s Writes” 3). While in London, she generated considerable controversy through two sharply critical articles about Ambrose Bierce, at the time a rising literary star residing in the English capital, as well as the English poet, novelist, and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne (Grenander 406–22; Sypher 5–14).While in Vienna, Harper met, and shortly thereafter married, Telemaque D’Apery. The Franco–Turkish son of a Napoleonic officer, D’Apery had risen from the ranks of the Ottoman army to become imperial treasurer. They moved to Constantinople, where they were implicated in an alleged plot against the Sultan. Although D’Apery managed to flee to Athens, Ottoman authorities arrested and imprisoned Harper until the American consul intervened to gain her release, whereupon she rejoined her husband (“Her Romantic” 6; Harper, “Letters: Number 28” 6). The couple eventually settled in New York City, and 1877, Harper gave birth to a son, Tello (“Boy’s” 10).Harper’s writing career flourished for several years following her return to America. She continued to publish articles on a range of topics for a wide variety of newspapers and produced several novels and numerous short stories. When other work began to dry up, beginning about 1902 and over the course of roughly a decade thereafter, she turned out at least thirty novelisations of sensational plays for Ogilvie Publishing (“Famille”; “Compleat”). She died on 2 May 1915 at the age of 72 following injuries suffered in a fall on a train (“Olive Harper Dies” 15).
3. Olive Harper and “Economic Feminism”