While my sister, Violet, known by all as Letty, judged me, too, she also admired me for my career. Because of this, we got along fairly well despite being such opposites.
It was my sister—though unwittingly, of course—who in the end helped me plot how I would avenge our father’s death, by asking me to lunch on a Wednesday in the beginning of October. While our lunching was not so rare an occurrence in the past, we had gotten out of the habit since she’d had her third child eighteen months before.
I was two years older than Letty. Everything about us, from our looks to our personalities and style, was different. She was elegant, with a grace that made heads turn. She had a charming sense of humor and that ability some people have to make you feel that every word you are saying matters intensely. She dressed impeccably in the brightest jewel tones. Her hair, twisted in a perfect blond knot, never escaped into unruly curls as my rust-colored locks did. Letty would enter a room on her husband Jack’s arm, and all eyes would focus on her. I, on the other hand, drew a different kind of attention. It was curiosity, not admiration. If Letty was light and gossamer, I was dark and damask. If she was laughter and love, I was questions and fury. But we were both very stubborn, so sometimes we argued.
Like our mother, Letty was concerned about her place in society. She adhered to the customs of how one did things and was careful not to push the limits of propriety. It was as if our mother had bottled her values and Letty had drunk them down.
But I didn’t give a fig about propriety or social mores.
So I admonished her that she was old-fashioned, a traitor to our sex for accepting our mother’s generation’s values. And she often had words about my lifestyle. Following my mother’s lead, Letty didn’t approve of my obsession with work and bohemian ways. Yet at the same time, she was excited by my escapades and always begged me to tell her everything I was doing.
Despite herself, Letty knew my heart, as I knew hers. Thus, we gave each other—and our opinions—a wide berth.
I did admire Letty for her charitable work. Indeed, I’d had a hand in her getting involved with it in the first place. When I’d first realized how much she was becoming like my mother and feared she’d turn into just another society matron, I’d taken action. In Silk, Satin and Scandals, the weekly gossip column I penned anonymously for the New York World, I’d written that according to rumors, Letty Garland Briggs had offered to take on the job of fund-raising chair for the Children’s Aid Society and how proud her family was of her. In fact, I reported, Granville Garland, of Garland’s Emporium on Fifth Avenue, was going to match all contributions for the year. I had gotten my father to agree first, of course. He had thoroughly approved of my efforts with a twinkle in his eye. Only my father and my editor, Ronald Nevins, knew I was the voice behind the column. It was a necessary precaution, given that I regularly sourced my material by spying on my family, their friends, and their acquaintances. Mother and Letty wouldn’t have been able to keep their lips sealed about it, nor would they have approved.
I’d started the column after graduating from Radcliffe. In 1900, it had been the only work I could find. I’d known I’d have to start with women’s topics—all female journalists did. But I’d hoped to retire the column once my investigative work took off. By the time Vee Swann had made her mark by way of an exposé on abortion practices, Silk, Satin and Scandals had become so popular that Mr. Nevins begged me to keep writing it, reminding me of the good the column did: it could raise awareness of social ills and charitable efforts under the guise of gossip.
He was right about that. In addition to the Children’s Aid Society, with my column, I’d been able to push my mother, my sister, and all their well-heeled friends and acquaintances into donating their time and money to the New York Foundling Hospital, the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement, the Little Mothers’ Aid Association, and more. Thanks to Silk, Satin and Scandals, noticing the world outside the List of 400 had become fashionable.
That Wednesday, Letty met me at noon for some shopping and lunch at the Birdcage, Garland’s fanciful luncheon restaurant. Father’s emporium was full of specialty venues for shoppers, each of them an homage to one of the women in his life. The Birdcage, so named after the dozen watercolor bird images painted by my mother that adorned its walls, served genteel dishes, including all my mother’s favorites: bouillon with cheese straws, curried egg sandwiches, creamed chicken and mushrooms, and Orange Fool, a citrus custard flavored with mint that she adored.
The Library, where shoppers could stop and rest and have tea or cordials while browsing the stacks, had been created with me in mind and sold copies of all my favorite books. There they served a tea called Lady Vera, a special blend Father had imported from Fortnum’s in England. It was a much fruitier version of Earl Grey, with notes of plum, orange, apricot, and peach. I drank it by the potful.
The Jewel Box was my father’s nod to my sister. The furniture was upholstered in her favorite lilac color, and the walls were decorated with fashion illustrations of Letty modeling the au courant and affordable jewelry people flocked to Garland’s to purchase.
My sister had wanted to stop there before we ate.
“I have a gift to buy,” Letty said as we entered the cushioned enclave designed to look like a jewelry case. The lights had been specially designed by Tiffany & Co. to resemble faceted gemstones: rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, and amethysts. The chairs were all gilded and upholstered with purple velvet-tufted cushions. The pulls on the drawers looked like bracelets, the knobs like brooches.
After inspecting the cases, Letty found something she liked and asked the salesman if she could see it.
“Do you like this?” Letty asked me, holding out her hand and showing off the seed-pearl bracelet with a small garnet clasp in a flower shape.
“It’s lovely, yes.”
And it was. Though the Jewel Box sold mostly trinkets and paste in order to keep prices low for customers, Father made certain never to skimp on quality. He only bought from the best jewelry makers and left the selling of fine gemstones to other New York merchants he knew, like Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Cartier, as well as Van Cleef & Arpels, Marcus & Co., Boucheron, and Buccellati.
The one thing we Garlands all had in common was a true love of beautiful things. From a fine silk robe to satin shoes. From an elegant lynx coat to a semiprecious trinket. From a necklace of perfectly matched Persian turquoise to a Burmese ruby ring to a brooch set with fire opals.
My family teased me that my obsessions didn’t fit with my hardworking girl-reporter reputation. And they didn’t. I was forced to eschew wearing most of my lovely things when I was at the city room or on assignment. A plain dress and wire-rimmed spectacles were as far as Vee Swann would go.
Except when I covered the social scene anonymously, in which case I could dress to the hilt in the kinds of clothes and jewelry people expected Vera Garland to wear. The truth was, I did love shopping with my mother or my sister, and I felt a bit embarrassed by it.
My father told me once, “Darling Vera, you are the daughter of a man who has built a department store that is a shrine to beauty. The daughter of a woman who dressed you in satin and cashmere from the day you were born. Admiring lovely things and wearing them are nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t make you any less of a reporter.”