Carnegie’s Maid: A Novel

February 12, 1864

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I fastened the gold watch and chain upon the bosom of Mrs. Carnegie’s gown, always the final step in the morning’s grooming ritual. Stepping back, I studied her gown. A stray silver hair on her dress drew my attention, and I fetched the brush designed specifically for silk gowns to give the fabric a thorough, final cleaning before I left. I wanted every detail to be correct. This was my first day off in the three months since my arrival in the Carnegie household, and I couldn’t risk any rogue thoughts about my competency sneaking into my mistress’s judgmental head in my absence.

In that time, not only had I developed a deft hand at Mrs. Carnegie’s personal routines, but I had also become adept at the regular tasks that occupied my time outside Mrs. Carnegie’s company—the endless cycle of washing hair combs and brushes; removing stains from soiled garments; starching muslins; washing the basins, glasses, and water jugs used in Mrs. Carnegie’s personal chambers; maintaining a strict schedule of fresh water, flowers, towels, and ironed linens in her bath and bedchamber; assessing the state of Mrs. Carnegie’s garments, darning stockings, mending linens, and brushing out her gowns. I had even become competent at serving as Mrs. Carnegie’s companion in the formal social occasions that peppered her days, accompanying her on the daily round of morning calls to female acquaintances and the teas that occurred in the late afternoons. Moreover, after I paid Mrs. Seeley the wages I owed her for the dress and the transportation from Philadelphia, I had managed to send home a few pennies to my family. Mum and Dad would be proud of their síofra, and I felt content that I was fulfilling my duty.

What began as a solid determination to please Mrs. Carnegie solely to secure my position developed into a fervent desire to succeed for its own sake. Born of my innate desire to undertake the impossible—that síofra quality—I wanted to infuse my mistress with delight. Not that I always succeeded with the mercurial, persnickety Mrs. Carnegie. And not that I didn’t worry about being called out as a fraud every step of the way. But I tried.

I watched and waited as she examined herself in the mirror.

“I look tidy, Clara,” Mrs. Carnegie said to me as she studied her reflection. I almost smiled at this rare compliment but willed my mouth toward modesty. She loathed any display of emotion tending toward self-indulgence.

“May I take your leave then, ma’am?”

“Yes, Clara. Please make certain to be back to the house in time to assist me at bedtime.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

After a respectful curtsy, I backed out of Mrs. Carnegie’s bedchamber and padded up the back staircase to my bedchamber, happy that I didn’t run into the elder Mr. Carnegie in the process. Since our encounter in the library, I’d only seen him occasionally, as he had been traveling. Mercifully, this meant that my exposure to him was minimal, consisting of brief curtsies as I dropped Mrs. Carnegie off at the dining room for dinner or the parlor for a business conversation with her sons. My discomfort in his presence had not abated since our library encounter, and I was relieved that our exchanges were few.

Surveying my little room—a steel-framed single bed, three-drawer dresser, and washstand with a pitcher—I was tempted to lie down under the coverlet and sleep the day away. Nearly one hundred and fifty days had passed since I had indulged in rest uninterrupted by shipmates’ noises or my maid’s duties. But Eliza’s letter had reminded me to make contact with my mother’s distant relatives—those same relatives who had lured me to Pittsburgh in the first place—and I had already committed to them for an afternoon meal.

Yawning at the tantalizing notion of sleep, I belted my gray tweed coat over my servant’s dress of black wool. I wondered whether I should change into a nicer gown for the family visit. But into what would I change? The only dress I owned besides my uniform was Mrs. Seeley’s castoff, and it resembled a uniform in any event. Not to mention I’d still have to serve Mrs. Carnegie in my uniform as soon as I returned. No, the black wool would have to suffice.

I landed on the final step of the back staircase with an unexpected thud. Mary and Hilda, the scullery maids, glanced up and, seeing it was me, quickly returned to their chopping of vegetables for the luncheon stew without so much as a smile. The divide between the lady’s maid and the rest of the staff was a chasm I’d yet to bridge, although in truth, I’d been too busy to make much of an effort. Only Mr. Ford acknowledged me with a grin. Like me, he seemed to exist in a world separate from the two realms dominated by Mr. Holyrod and Mrs. Stewart. Was it because of his color or his station? I did not know, but I was grateful for his small kindnesses in a domain where I was either ignored or obliquely derided, by Hilda in particular.

“It must be your day off, Miss Kelley,” he called over.

“It is indeed, Mr. Ford,” I answered with a smile. I actually felt like skipping.

“Enjoy, but hurry back to us. We can’t have the mistress wanting you too long.”

Stepping onto the sidewalk, the first time unencumbered by Mrs. Carnegie or a list of errands, I began the long walk down the cobblestones of Reynolds Street to the streetcar stop that would take me to Allegheny City, the town abutting Pittsburgh to the west. The air nipped at my fingers and cheeks—warm gloves and a scarf were too dear to purchase—but I didn’t care. I felt free and light.

At my leisure, I stared at the homes bordering the Carnegie house. Although I’d accompanied Mrs. Carnegie into certain of them several times as she made morning calls or took afternoon tea, the homes looked grander from my vantage point now than on the heels of my mistress. I could hardly believe that I was allowed entrance into them. It never ceased to astonish me that my ruse as Clara Kelley was working.

Thinking for a moment of the real Clara Kelley, I wondered how her Thomas was faring. I had heard nothing from him since the letter, but I often imagined him at home in Dublin, waiting for a response from his beloved, much like I waited for word from my family. But Thomas’s reply would never come. He would forever believe that Clara had rejected him, not that she had died at sea. He would never be able to mourn her.

Thinking of Thomas made me feel guilty for the luck I had in landing this position and the lies I’d told. The money was far more plentiful than I’d earn in a mill or as a low-level domestic like Hilda. Yet in my determination to insinuate myself into the graces of Mrs. Carnegie, I’d had little time to consider the source of my luck. Sometimes, I almost forgot that my gain had been at the expense of another’s sacrifice.

My lighthearted mood turned dark with these thoughts of the other Clara Kelley as I stepped from the streetcar platform into a passenger car. The streetcar was almost empty at this off-hour, and I claimed a wooden bench for my own. As the streetcar rumbled to life, I stared out the window at the landscape made white by a blanket of fresh-fallen snow. Although the churches and stores and houses grew steadily less grand the farther we traveled from Homewood, the snow made the city glisten, a sight that would normally have inspired delight.

The horse-drawn streetcar from Homewood Station to Allegheny City passed by Pittsburgh, quite close to its three rivers lined with mills and factories. More snow began to fall, but the nearer the streetcar drew to the city, the more fleeting the snow’s cleansing powers became. The snow washed white the black skies for mere moments before the spewing soot blackened it again. By the time the streetcar crossed a suspension bridge from Pittsburgh into Allegheny City, the snow lost the battle with the soot, and black smuts sailed down like a new species of snow, settling on everything with an inky, sticky layer.

The streetcar stopped at Rebecca Street, and I left the relative order of the station and joined the human stream bobbing along the road. I walked down crowded, filthy streets, and the acidic air, made acrid by the nearby tanneries, burned the inside of my mouth and nose. I could see not a single street sign amid the chaos. Had I gotten off at the wrong stop? Before venturing too far, I retreated back to the station, searching for a conductor or engineer who could be trusted to help me.

I implored a uniformed ticket agent, harried by a long queue. “I’m looking for 354 Rebecca Street, sir. Do you happen to know where it is?”

“Ah, that’s in Slab Town, a bit of a walk from here.”

I was confused. I would have sworn the engineer had called out Rebecca Street just before we pulled into the station. “I thought this was the Rebecca Street stop.”

“It is. But this is Slab Town, miss—it’s no Ridge Avenue neighborhood. It’s like a rabbit’s warren in there. I can give you general directions, but you’ll be at the mercy of the locals once you get there to find the exact house.”

“Perhaps I should hire a cab to take me there.”

“No cab will go into Slab Town, miss.” He turned away to answer the call of a clamoring customer.

Following the ticket agent’s direction to the letter, I made my way down Rebecca Street, dodging piles of steaming horse dung and mucking up my shoes in a muddy street that had never seen a cobblestone lining. Gangs of grubby street urchins scampering down the thoroughfare nearly toppled me into a group of men playing dice on the curb and a woman hanging laundry, a futile task in such a place. After begging their pardon, I finally reached the 330 section of Rebecca Street. The houses there were silhouetted against the bloodred flames from the factories just behind. Incredible how industry spilled onto the streets right next to homes without any border between the two.

Try as I might, I could not locate my cousin’s house number. The passersby looked inhospitable at best, and I was reluctant to approach anyone for help. Finally, a kindly looking older gentleman, in ragged but scrupulously clean clothes, hobbled past, and I dared to ask his assistance.

With a thick German accent, he answered my question. “You can’t find the number because 354 doesn’t have a number painted on it. It’s squeezed between those two houses there.”

Feeling like a trespasser, I skulked down the road to where the elderly man pointed. He was right. Here, squeezed between the dilapidated homes of Rebecca Street, stood a house made from salvaged wood and scrap metal, even more decrepit than the others and even closer to the sparks flying out from the factory behind the houses.

Whether from its position on the slope of a hill or from the shoddy construction of the home itself, my cousin’s house slanted into the house next door, almost like a lean-to. No paint adorned the ragged wood exterior, and the two upstairs windows were covered in paper instead of glass. This poor house would have been my home but for the death of the other Clara Kelley.

I hesitated before knocking. Only the fact that these poor people would have prepared for my visit—possibly spending what little they might have on a meal in my honor—stopped me from turning away. Only that commitment prevented me from running from what would have been my fate.

The door opened before my knuckles could rap. “We thought you’d never get here,” a bearded man in his late thirties called out. He could only be Patrick Lamb, my mother’s second cousin.

Patrick clapped his arms around me. “You must be Alice’s girl. You’ve got your mother’s eyes. Come in out of the cold.”

Squinting into the dim candlelight, I walked into the single room that made up the ground floor of Patrick’s house. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out a pregnant woman with a baby on her hip and a toddler clutching her ankles. Two other children, one boy and one girl of perhaps five and six years of age, hid behind her dun-colored skirts. They stood in front of a rectangular wooden table set for supper in a room so covered in the grimy residue from the nearby factories and mills that cinereous was the only way I could think of to describe it.

“Welcome, Cousin. It’s good to see a friendly Irish face in this sea of Germans,” Patrick’s wife, Maeve, said. Petite but for her burgeoning belly, she was quietly pretty, an attractiveness marred only by the dark circles under her eyes. Looking at their many young children, I could well understand her exhaustion.

Patrick gestured to the table. “Come sit. Tell us of your journey from Ireland. We expected you here some time ago.”

Children flanking me, I settled at the table, which, as I suspected, was heaped high with the best food they could afford. Stewed rabbit, boiled potatoes, and a loaf of bread spread out over the table, paltry compared to the Carnegies’ dining table but simple, hearty fare nonetheless. And from the state of the family and their home, it looked hard-earned.

I struggled to return to my natural brogue after so many days of feigning an Anglo-Irish accent. “You shouldn’t have done all this.”

“Nonsense. I’ve had solid work here in the mills, as I wrote your mother. We’ve been able to afford our own home. No sharing rooms with others.” He glanced over at his wife with pride. “Our children have hard-soled shoes on their feet and full bellies. No hunger like we had in Galway.”

“And I take in some needlework at night for the extras,” Maeve chimed in, eager to share her contribution. “Like tonight.”

My fork, full of stewed rabbit, froze midair. The thought of this young, pregnant mother tending to four small children while undertaking needlework by dim candlelight to feed me turned my stomach. How could I take food from the mouths of these children?

But refusing to eat would insult the Lambs, something I would never do to this proud family. As I chewed on my rabbit, I explained that I worked in the Carnegie home, although I described myself as a scullery maid, as I had to my own family. No one from our sort of background would be permitted to serve as a lady’s maid, and I wanted no one to know the deceptive means by which I had procured the position. My face burning with shame over my lies, I turned the conversation away from myself and toward Patrick and Maeve’s life in Pittsburgh—the dangerous work Patrick undertook in the mills, the constant fighting among groups of immigrants for a higher rung in the hierarchy, Maeve’s Sisyphean battle with the grime, waged with vigor but without success, the threat of cholera due to the lack of a sewage system. I instinctively winced at their recounting but reminded myself that they wouldn’t want me to pity them. No matter the soot permeating every pore on their skin and every surface of their home in Slab Town, no matter the precariousness of Patrick’s work, their life was inestimably better than what they would have faced in Galway, where the famine ravaged entire families and left those without larger farms like the one maintained by my family with no means to support themselves.

What had I done to deserve a better chance than them? Perhaps more importantly, what would I do with my good fortune beyond ensuring the well-being of my family at home?