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| My son and I in 2011. |
I'm gnashing my teeth. I'm pulling my hair.
On November 26, the television series The Gilded Age introduced a new character: Emily Roebling.
Emily, as anyone who's ever walked across the Brooklyn Bridge may know, was a real person, but that didn't stop the writers of The Gilded Age from making up stuff about her, such as saying she studied engineering in Europe and was secretly working as the chief engineer of the bridge.
No, no, no. She didn't. She wasn't.
I know this because I spent many years researching her life.
Here's the story of how I came to study Emily...and why, although she was neither the congenial character nor the engineering wizard presented on The Gilded Age, I came to love the woman she was.
Time Travels
It all started with a book.
Our son was eight and loved
bridges, so every night our family read about a different span, from the
graceful arch of the Ross Island Bridge in Portland, Oregon, to
the harp-shaped Puente del Alamillo in Seville, Spain. Both our son and his
little sister were in their pajamas, all set for bed, when we read the story
behind the Brooklyn Bridge, the Victorian structure that was once called “the
eighth wonder of the world.”
When Washington Roebling, the
bridge’s chief engineer, became dangerously ill, his wife, Emily, became his
assistant, meeting with engineers and city leaders in an era when women were
supposed to stay home and embroider cushions. In a day of corsets and calling
cards, Emily talked with contractors and politicians, relaying Washington’s
specifications for cutting the stone that would become the bridge’s towers and for making the giant cables that would hold the roadway.
Within days of learning her name, I
knew I wanted to write Emily's biography. I’d recently finished writing
copy for a catalog that sold things like a
cat-shaped clock that kept time by swinging its tail. Reading about Emily was
like receiving a key to a door that could lead to a new adventure. Here was a fresh historical figure to inspire school girls, to remind
them of what women can do and to keep on taking those math and science classes.
Almost as soon as I started,
though, my research began running into roadblocks. For one thing, most of Emily’s
early letters were missing. What’s more, in her surviving correspondence, she
frequently nagged her adult son, John A. Roebling, II, telling him how to care
for his clothing, raise his children, and manage his money. “What you call
grinding poverty…is having to think before hand [sic] how to spend your
money to the best advantage,” she once scolded him.[i] Not
to mention that she supported neither women’s suffrage nor racial diversity in
the women’s groups she belonged to. Did I even like Emily well enough to write
about her?
Washington and Emily’s Civil War
courtship had been as passionate as Victorian etiquette allowed. Recalling
their first kiss, he wrote,
…I remember that first tete a tete
[sic] evening at the signal station when the moon rose…. I merely ventured to
rub my cheek against yours; it could not have been long after that; I know when
the ice was broken there was no end to them.[ii]
Later though, as a middle-aged wife, Emily sounded less affectionate. She told John, “Your father has
taken one of his cantankerous spells again and dies hourly…. I have sent for Dr. Weir to tell us there is nothing
the matter.”[iii] With
different views on money, too, she said their discussions on how to handle
their fortune were like Bull Run, “a battle field that has been fought over
more than once.”[iv]
By the time I’d learned this much,
I’d turned 40. My children were no longer small, and countless hours spent
researching my book were gone for good – hours I could have spent writing a
novel, publishing poems, or at least keeping the house cleaner. Still, I picked
away at my research, heading straight to my desk after dropping my son and
daughter off at school. When I discovered the Roebling family papers were saved
on microfilm at Rutgers University and could be sent to my library, my enthusiasm for the
project rekindled. With this new wealth of later letters, I began to see Emily
as neither a cranky wife nor a feminist heroine; she simply became a living,
breathing human being.
As reels of microfilm spun across a
screen, I read about her interests – bowling, bicycling and horseback riding –
and the quilting party she attended where the guests stuffed themselves
with potato salad. I found a list of Emily’s remedies for common ailments,
which included sipping a glass of hot water for a headache and taking a quarter
of a gram of codeine for a bad cough. I read, too, affectionate letters from
John (“Dear Em” he began one), and a condolence note to Washington after
Emily’s death (“Oh my friend, my friend my heart is with you!”)[v].
Best of all, I saw that Emily could
laugh at herself. When she was elected to Sorosis (a prestigious women’s
society), she joked that now the club
would be considered an intellectually superior group. Likewise, she was amused
when a newspaper article on clubwomen said that “Mrs. Roebling is not half as
disagreeable as we thought.”[vi]
Despite her grumblings about her
husband and son, she also freely expressed her love for them. Even in her
advice-laden letters to John, I recognized the tenderness a mother feels for a
grown son she can no longer hold. From my own frustrations with my writing, I thought I
understood her complaints about Washington, too. I wasn't half as far with my work as I'd like to be, but I knew that was nothing compared to being a full-time care-giver for a chronically-ill husband. In this light, I began to think that Emily’s more querulous
remarks might be the expressions of a smart, energetic woman
who longed to get out of the house and in society. Although
she died almost 60 years before I was born, I felt I knew Emily as well as a
dear friend.
Life opened up for Emily after the bridge was done. By 1903, she’d edited a book, taken a women’s law class at New York University, served on the board of a woman’s college and been presented to Queen Victoria. She’d also helped organize camps for the Spanish-American War veterans who were sick with yellow fever, traveled across Europe on the Orient Express, and joined thousands of dignitaries and upper-class spectators in Moscow for the coronation of Czar Nicholas II. Her lively lectures about her Russian travels were particularly popular, as she cleverly peppered her talks with detailed descriptions of everything she saw, from the peacock feather in the Chinese viceroy’s hat to the sad, pale face of the last czar of Russia.
On a hot Sunday morning 12 years
after I first heard of Emily Roebling, I rode the subway with my family to the
entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge. Expecting to be bowled over by the moment, I
found myself feeling oddly calm. Up close, the bridge was still beautiful, but
I could see it was a combination of concrete and wires more than a thing of
magic or myth. Yes, I was thrilled to walk beside my tall, 20-year-old son as
we crossed the span Emily had helped her husband build, but it had been just as
exciting to read the words written in her hand, to hear her voice in my head,
to reach across time and see the common ground where she and I both stood.
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| Standing by a plaque that honors Emily. |
[i] All
quotes from letters and scrapbooks are from Roebling Family Papers, Special
Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Archives. Emily Warren
Roebling (EWR) to John A. Roebling, II (JAR II), April 25, 1893.
[ii]
Washington A. Roebling (WAR) to Emily Warren,
[iii] EWR to
JAR II, May 20, 1894.
[iv] EWR to
JAR II, July 18, 1898.
[v] JAR II
to EWR, April 21, 1898; Letter to WAR in1903 Scrapbook: “In Memoriam, Mrs.
Washington A. Roebling.”
[vi] EWR to
JAR II, March 22, 1896.
