Part One
The Maiden Voyage of the Princess
by Dame Edna Sackville
You have all heard by now of the Princess of the Pacific, the Farrar Line’s newest and most impressive ship. But only I, dearest readers, can give you the full story of her maiden voyage, for today I sail on the celebrated ship into the open ocean, that vast and magical field of water—a landscape by turns starkly brilliant under the rays of a fierce sun, or dizzying, changeable, windswept. Who cares about all that, you may wonder, when there are three formal dining rooms, a Turkish bath, and a ladies’ couturier on board? Fear not, I will give every detail, my sweet ones, the landscape and the parties. It is sure to be a romance to thrill the heart and elevate the soul, this voyage to the very edge of the world. But, like many a sea voyage, the plot began to thicken while still on land. . . .
The land in question is the farthest west you can go in our country, a backwater called San Francisco (named by the Spanish, who tromped through in one or another of the previous centuries), where a fortune of two generations is considered old money. This is a town where you always smell the sawdust, not to mention the low tide. I descended upon the place along with many of the fine people you are familiar with from my columns—the Misses Van Huysen, Emma and Lucille, resplendent in the couture they acquired over the summer in Paris; the Marquis and Marquise of Brenn; members of the most eminent families of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston; and descendants of the grand old lines of Europe. The first voyage of the Princess is one of those events that bring all the best people together, for it promises lavish parties and gossip galore. (I suffer for you reader; I do, I do.)
The Farrar Line, which has been responsible for moving stylish people across the Atlantic for over fifty years now, spared no expense in publicizing the Princess. It is well known that she has a swimming pool and tailor and wireless on board. That there is an indoor tennis court and a top-deck observatory. Over the summer it was a kind of competition amongst the sporting set to get on the passenger list. And for no one more so than the unattached ladies of the best families. . . .
The scions of the Farrar fortune will be making the trip, too, you see. The elder Farrar son, Carlton (first in line to succeed his father, that eminent businessman and philanthropist Winthrop Farrar II, as head of the family concern), is here with his wife, the renowned beauty Camilla née Jones. But more exciting to the rest of us: the younger son, the one the columnists call Fitz (just as dashing as he sounds, I can assure you!). He is popular among the gents for his legendary explorations (serialized by my competitor The Evening Phoenix, but we forgive him) and with the ladies for cutting such a fine figure and for being such a riotous good time. These young men are thought to be one of the main attractions on a ship that boasts many unheard-of luxuries and entertainments. The charter is San Francisco–Honolulu–Sydney, and as has been much reported, the young Fitz will be leading an expedition into the interior of Australia upon arrival.
The night before the ship’s departure, a grand fete was held at the Palace Hotel for all the first-class passengers, and while it was at first a staid affair, soon well-dressed people who were not on the guest list began to arrive and I got to witness firsthand the spirit of this barbarous coast. San Francisco society is not at all as formal as we are back East, and certainly not as sophisticated as in the grand houses of Europe. Even among this rather raucous group of young millionaires, one young woman stood out. Not on account of her stature—she was rather slight—but because she seemed entirely indifferent to the rules of decorum usually observed in such rooms. She was dressed impeccably—I could not fault her there—but she talked loudly, ordered champagne rather than waiting to have it brought to her, moved around the room to whomever she found interesting, expressed frank opinions, and was generally conspicuous.
And yet Fitzhugh Farrar could not take his eyes away.
Presently, Fitz and this wild girl began to dance together, and with such energy that many saw not only the lady’s stockings but also her underskirts. It must be admitted that the heir to the shipping fortune drank more than his older brother thought proper. It was a true “scene,” as we say, though nothing compared with what I expect shall come next.
For Vidalia Marin Hazzard—that is the peculiar name this rogue of a girl’s parents gave her—has just been added to the passenger list of the Princess, having taken a very fine suite on the promenade deck. I wondered, as any reasonable person might, if there was a story in this sudden thirst for travel. . . .
One
For Vidalia Marin Hazzard—age seventeen years and four months, height five feet one, with eyes a color as shifting as fool’s gold—the ocean possessed no special romance. To be certain, the silver, shining sea was a perfectly beautiful backdrop to a picnic in the Presidio, or an evening’s entertainment at the Cliff House, but she was a girl with feet firmly planted on the earth and had never thought anything much of the vast waterway that was her own backyard. But now, in the hustle of the Embarcadero, seeing the gleaming side of the ship that rose from the gray-green surface of the San Francisco Bay like a monument, like a towering city unto itself, she felt her breath snatched and her spine tingling and she had to admit that maybe it was impressive enough to merit so much frenzied anticipation.
“Vida!” cried one of the scrum of reporters gathered at the waterfront to document an event that had been the talk of the town for some months already. He had to shout to be heard over the brass band and the confetti shooter and the ubiquitous exclamations of wonderment. “Miss Hazzard!”
His shouting cut into the fog that resided somewhere between her forehead and the backs of her eyes, and she remembered what a hideous quantity of champagne she had drunk the night before. But a headache was no excuse not to leave a winning final impression on the people of her hometown. She turned in her artful way and by the time she met the young man’s eye her mouth had assumed a magnificent smile. She clutched a fistful of her opulently tiered ivory skirt (White for sailing, she had decided that morning, after her parents had told her to board the famous ship or settle quickly on a local boy to marry before she ruined her reputation once and for all) and placed her other hand on the narrow of her waist. A camera’s flash went poof. “Yes?” she said to no member of the assembled in particular.
“What do you make of it?”
“It’s a little small, don’t you think?” The young man laughed and she shrugged and went on in a confessional tone: “Oh well, I guess it is a little wonderful after all.”
“Not more wonderful than you.”
“You know very well that I would never say any such thing—I am never immodest,” she replied, and winked. For it was one of her charms that she knew who she was, and never tried to hide that she wasn’t really very modest at all. The reporter, who had been with the Chronicle almost a year now, and whose favor she had bought with little favors like opera tickets and baskets of big ripe strawberries from the Salinas Valley, knew it, too. He had been crucial in keeping certain stories about her out of the press, and getting others into print—which was one of the reasons it had taken until this morning for her parents to become fully aware what a wild kind of life she had managed to live right under their noses.