When the Lucida sails for Europe today, it will have amongst her saloon passengers Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Newbold, their guest Jenny Livingston, the prince of Bavaria and his retinue, the painter Lispenard Bradley, traveling in a party with the Abelard Gores, and the countess de Perignon and her daughter, who are said not to have enjoyed our shores as much as they had hoped….
— FROM THE SOCIETY PAGE OF THE NEW-YORK NEWS OF THE WORLD GAZETTE, TUESDAY, JULY 24, 1900
“I DO HOPE IT WON’T BE A BOTHER,” MRS. HENRY Schoonmaker said with uncharacteristic contrition. She let her eyes dart about the high entryway of the Schoonmaker mansion for perhaps the final time, her red mouth crookedly smirking on one side. The bother she was referring to were the eight or nine trunks packed with her best clothing and jewels currently blocking the way to the main hall. It was only early that morning that she had finally left the prince of Bavaria’s bed, and she had taken the opportunity to make herself lovely for him again. She had bathed and changed with the assistance of her maid, and now stood, fresh and clean and tall in a fitted ivory jacket and matching skirt, her long neck encased in baby blue lace, her dark hair done up and mostly covered by a broad straw hat, prettily festooned with fake sparrows. “I have arranged for Mr. Rathmill, who is my family’s butler, to have them picked up shortly.”
The Schoonmakers’ butler nodded coldly.
“Good-bye, then,” Penelope concluded as she pulled on her gloves. She had been trying not to be difficult, for even though she and Henry desired the swift annulment of their marriage, one never knew how families would behave in a situation like this one, and there were several hundred items that she would really rather have at the Hayes house if any trouble began. But the day was advancing and her goodwill had run out. She walked through the front door and descended the limestone steps without looking back.
Girls like her were not supposed to ride in hansom cabs, but this was an awkward period when she could no longer use her husband’s stable and did not yet have the use of her lover’s coach. Anyway, she was not a debutante, but a married woman who had seduced a prince. And surely he would be her husband in time for Christmas in the Alps. Right there on Fifth, in front of passing carriages full of spying eyes and wagging tongues, she flagged one down. Then she asked to be taken to the New Netherland.
As she entered the lobby of the hotel, with its gleaming mosaic floor, its aroma of flowers and tea, the bellboys in Royal blue uniform darting from one end to the other, she couldn’t help but think how she might one day return to stay there — she would be a little older then, vastly more soignée, and in possession of a new title or two — and experience a flood of memories of her first love affair of any real importance. Because it was clear to her now, from her elevated position, that Henry had only been a kind of practice for her.
“Madame, may I help you?”
Mr. Cullen, the slight concierge, was gazing up at her. He gripped his hands behind his back, and it struck her as peculiar that he had approached her, in the midst of the hushed busyness of that lobby, when he surely knew that she had stayed there the previous two nights, if only so that he could be discreet about it.
The oddness evaporated into her smile, however, as she pronounced the words, “I am here to visit the prince of Bavaria.”
For a moment there was no reply, and so she decided to specify. “Frederick.”
Mr. Cullen took in a breath. “The prince is no longer a guest at the hotel, Madame.”
“You must be mistaken,” Penelope replied, confidence and irritation mingling in her tone.
“Quite sure, Madame, but his valet is over there….”
Penelope’s neck twisted sharply around and she saw, on the far end of the lobby, by a grove of potted palms, the prince’s man guarding a mountain of luggage. Without glancing back at the concierge, she strode across the floor.
“Where is Frederick?” she demanded, once she had arrived beside the great piles of leather cases and packed crates.
“Ah…Mrs. Schoonmaker.” The valet looked up from a folded broadsheet. In his polished British pronunciation, she could hear all the backward American associations her married name held for him. “He has departed already, I’m afraid.”
“What do you mean, departed?” Her shoulders had become frozen, tight and high under her little jacket. “Departed where? To another hotel? Was something amiss with the service here? Because my family often throws parties at the Netherland, and if you need my father to speak with the management—”
“He sails for Europe today.”
“Did he leave instructions for me?” Her desperation to have this vexing news explained was not subtle in her voice, and she hated herself for it, even while she was helpless to fix the unpleasant sound. “Shall I meet him on the dock or—”
“The prince is sailing today,” the valet went on, placing each word carefully after the last. “He has become engaged to Therese, the future countess de Perignon, and he wants to travel to see his family as quickly as possible. He hopes to tell them before the engagement becomes too generally known.”
“But—” Penelope’s eyelids fell shut as a sensation of utter abasement swept over her. “I thought—” she began, and managed to silence herself before saying, I thought he was in love with me.
Surely the valet noticed the shock and humiliation draining what color there was from her oval face. And perhaps he even pitied her a little, for he continued in a whisper: “You ought to consider it a compliment, for the prince is known in his own country for the artfulness of his seductions, and ladies who have laid down their honor for him are known to brag of it for years to come.”
“Oh, God, what a fool,” she spit. She had to put her hand on her famously narrow waist to steady herself. It would be a useless waist to her from now on, for she was not even twenty and already damaged goods. A ruined girl. She was not going to be a princess after all; that future would never be. She’d have to stay in New York, where everybody was already whispering viciously about her bad behavior, and where her husband was poised to trade her in for his preferred vintage.
“You might yet catch him, I suppose.” The valet gave her a doubtful look. “The ship sails at noon, but he wanted to hurry ahead to be sure that his fiancée and her mother were comfortable.”
But Penelope had no desire to go to the docks. The humiliation was already too heady for the girl the prince had used up and promptly discarded. She had spent so much time with him that week, and every second since the afternoon of Carolina Broad’s canceled nuptials — it seemed impossible to her that he could have found an hour to propose to the little French woman, but then she realized that he had perhaps already been engaged when she arrived on Sunday. In a matter of minutes, her slender body had been thoroughly depleted by a very crushing shame. It was too much for her; her great blue eyes disappeared under thick lashes. The tall white column of her wavered, then crumbled, as though into pieces on the ground. As her head slumped to her shoulder, and her sense of her surroundings began to fade, she heard feet rush in her direction. Someone called out for a doctor. The last thing she heard was the arch voice of a lady saying, “My word…if it isn’t the fallen Mrs. Schoonmaker.”