At the Metapsychical Salon

Some arrived on foot from East Side apartments, others alighted from 5^th Avenue trolley cars, and a swaddled few pulled up in automobiles. Regardless of starting-point, mode of travel, or status in the upper strata of Manhattan, they each faced the same bitter wind on the sidewalk, the same battle for advantage at the cloakroom, and the same squeeze into the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria.

The Women’s Entertainment Club was host of a Metapsychical Evening featuring the most prominent Psychics, Spiritualists, and Clairvoyants of the day. Mrs. Roswell Hitchcock, Club President, anticipated a glittering spectacle, a golden hour inspiring golden thought; she had high expectations that her ladies would arrive “read-up and ready to talk, gowned-up and ready to think”.

Diana Watts was fully “gowned-up” in a purple-and-yellow evening gown, which had cost her a month’s salary at Le Queux's Couturier on Union Square. A middle-school teacher with aspirations for betterment, the salon event was a celestial diversion from the evening ritual of correcting ink-blotted copy books under the dim gaslight in her small apartment. It was John Duncan Quakenbos that she selected as her escort that evening; a tall, good-looking, sportsman, who somehow shielded her from the crush of the crowd. She was ready to glitter, in appearance and substance, and keen to get on with it.

“We’ll soon be there but we are delayed because of the Swami fellow”, said Quakenbos, surveilling the landscape.

Pressed in on all sides, in the middle of the muddle, unable to choose her own path, Diana couldn’t see much of the Swami because she was obstructed by a woman of size and deportment similar to her own, with a mass of black hair up-done in an arrangement of buns and wispy braids much like her own, decorated here and there with tiny stuffed hummingbirds, exactly like her own.  Diana suddenly realized, with dismay, that the woman was wearing a purple-and-yellow decollete gown identical in every respect to her own. It was as if she was shuffling along behind her twin. It was a mockery, a parody, but of whom? By whom?

The woman was accompanied by a large, bearded man, who on being disgorged from the congested doorway was warmly greeted by both Swami Vivekananda and Mrs. Hitchcock. The hirsute giant drew the black-haired woman by hand into closer proximity to the hostess, whereupon she was revealed to possess a pale and delicate face, not dissimilar to Diana’s. To top it all, this woman - her rival- was wearing a scarab brooch on the breast of her gown, identical to the one that Diana had bought earlier that week at Le Queux's. 

The woman was ravishing, the outfit was gorgeous. Diana felt like a clumsy burlesque act in comparison.

Quakenbos was oblivious to the rapidly evolving drama that was playing out in the mind of his lovely companion, "I believe that is Gustafsson the polar explorer", he said, then pointing at the woman, "which means that must be the fabulous and scandalous Contessa di Padua."

Fabulous and scandalous, and dressed in purple and yellow.

The admiring ballroom crowd gently parted as Gustafsson and the Contessa moved on from the reception area and onto the dance floor, where seats were laid out in informal clusters.

Diana was now at the front of the receiving line, bathed in the sparkling light of the chandeliers. all purple and yellow. Quakenbos stepped forward and bowed to the Swami, Diana followed, sensing correctly, that being the second of two identical women, it was she that would be pegged the mimic, the parody. The Swami bobbled his head in a benign disinterested way, but then Mrs. Hitchcock’s gaze fell upon her, and in the double-take, the triple-take, the quick glance at the on-bound Contessa, Mrs. Hitchcock betrayed her confusion.

“Are you by chance related to the Contessa?”, asked Mrs. Hitchcock, her head tilted slightly, quizzically, "a follower, an acolyte?" 

“No madam, I am a schoolteacher”, said Diana.

“Oh, then is it some kind of loosely organized movement?” said Mrs. Hitchcock, who thrilled at the prospects of female protest. She leaned toward Diana, and quietly said, “if you are of the suffragist school, and you plan a demonstration, please wait until Wilson, the so-called 'limitless man' starts his lecture. He is an insufferable bore and needs a comeuppance”. 

Diana was about to explain away the dress as a coincidence but froze. In the background, the purple-and-yellow gowned Contessa, mouth slightly agape, was looking back at Diana. The Contessa’s eyes narrowed, shooting daggers at Diana.  

“Punch?” said Quakenbos, grabbing her elbow and steering her away from the reception line and in the direction of the Contessa.

Diana was familiar with the male pasttime of prizefighting, but she did not fancy Quakenbos' odds going up against Gustafsson. Nor did she much fancy her odds going up against the Contessa.

“Punch?” asked Quakenbos a second time, and to her vacant nod he responded with an encouraging, “back in a jiffy”, and off he went in the direction the buffet table and one very large silver punch bowl where Gustafsson was already at work. 

Diana sailed forth, drawn toward the Contessa as if to an iceberg in the ocean.

Meanwhile. a smartly dressed man stepped up on a dais next to the stage, and slowly wound up into a full-throated and unaccompanied rendition of Tosti’s Preghiera. He had an excellent tenor voice, diverting the crowd's attention away from the impending clash of colors.

“Is this some kind of jest?” hissed the Contessa, gesturing at Diana’s hair and dress. She had a small pretty nose, but uplifted, it lost most of its charm, and Diana imagined poking her fingers into the tiny nostrils. “Did someone put you up to this as some kind of stunt?” added the Contessa.

“I could ask the same”, said Diana, shocked at her uncharacteristic boldness. She’d spent a lot of money on this dress, and she would not yield at the first blow.

“Do you know who I am?” said the Contessa.

“No, but I can find out for you if it would be helpful”.

The ensuing conversation was not pleasant, but it went by largely unheard by the vast majority of the club members owing to the countervailing distraction of lachrymose song. The Contessa was outraged by Diana's affrontery and gall, apoplectic at the conceit that this nobody might mimic themselves into a somebody. “Who put you up to it? Was it the Sun? Was it the Post”. She proceeded to lambast the New York newspapers, and the scoundrels and grifters that dwelt in that lowly gutter. “How insolent! Shame on you!” she said, then switched to torrential Italian, a few choice Saxon words thrown in. 

Diana, for her part, discovered defiance in righteous indignation, strength in moral certitude, and gave as good as she got. “How dare you speak to me like that you stuck up snob”, she protested, “you are a rude and scandalous European," It was meant as a razor-cutting criticism but sounded rather exciting, even desirable.

Diana felt she had lost advantage, so she was grateful when the Tenor finished the Tosti song to a round of enthusiastic applause then contemplative quiet, which forced an uneasy truce on the battling women.

Mrs. Hitchcock sensed a crisis in the making, and deftly rounded up the odd assortment of experts that would speak that evening. Doctor Joshua Barton would start with a lecture on Suggestionism, followed by Dr Yamaguchi on the topic of Psychic Tokyo, and Mr. Sill was primed to let loose on Detroit’s Clairvoyants. Floyd Wilson, practicing his 'superman' pose, was easily found and readied for the fourth speaking slot.

The Tosti was done, the speakers were ready, the audience gathered in clusters of polite expectation, and it was through the throng that two tall men carried small glasses of rose-colored punch. Gustafsson and Quakenbos were engaged in animated and friendly conversation, thick as thieves in speculation about the Blonde Eskimo Tribe. They stopped abruptly when they saw the purple-and-yellow gowned women engaged once more in heated disagreement.

“Blessed Mercury, which is which?” said Gustafsson of the two women. It was meant to be witty, but the Contessa turned on him like a virago, and he sensibly judged in his paramour’s stream of Italo-English invectives an untamable ferocity that justified a quick retreat to the punch bowl, where he idly contemplated escape from Manhattan on a Boston-bound whaler.

Quakenbos, meanwhile, made the terrible mistake of doubling down on the joke, which was a delusional overestimation of his charm, “let’s jolly well flip a coin!” he said, “one is as good as the other.” 

It was a stupid thing to say, and it bound the two angry women in a shared cause. Quakenbos came under immediate and relentless stereophonic attack, from which he cowed away like a beaten dog. It was with shock – and little admiration – that he watched Diana wind up and pitch a fast-ball brooch at his head. He ducked as the scarab beetle flew across the ballroom and became impaled pin-first in the leg of the horrified Tenor. The commotion provided cover for Quakenbos, who found refuge amidst a coterie of long-haired Russian mystics.

It was at this point, that Alina Crawley entered the ballroom, a late comer, accompanied by her husband. She had a large mass of black hair piled upon her head in a slightly disorderly, but charming style, accentuated by small stuffed hummingbirds. Her dress was a simple but stunning decollete of purple-and-yellow. She smiled and laughed in carefree way until her gaze fell upon the purple-and-yellow gowns of Diana and Contessa di Padua. It was as if a cloud had passed between her and the sun. The women frowned, she frowned, and an urgent meeting of the purple-and-yellow convened. Mr. Crawley, a man of good judgment, quietly withdrew to the punch bowl.

Meanwhile, at the dais, Doctor Joshua Barton began rambling in an earnest way about the practical use of Transliminalism; “the awesome power…. the collective mind… the this, that, the other.” The audience quickly bored of it, vaguely understanding it to be pseudo-scientific nonsense, and, besides, everyone was much more interested in the purple and yellow ladies: one, two three! Did the scarab denote a secret society? Was the purple-and-yellow the uniform of a militant organization? Were they suffragists?   Doctor Barton droned on.

In organizing the salon Mrs. Hitchcock’s profound hope was that she could steer the modern American woman away from the domestic, beyond the artistic, in the direction of the intellectual, in the direction of men. She imagined a future America, in which women would have the right to vote, they would study alongside men, they would populate the major professions, ascend to the peak of business, occupy the highest offices in the land. In these purple-and-yellow clad women, huddled now in conference, she sensed a movement in that direction.

“So let me get this straight”, said Diana, “Le Queux charged you just two hundred dollars for the dress?”

“Two hundred for the dress, five for the brooch, and the coiffure was ten dollars”, said Alina Crowley, wised up to the situation and instantly accepted into the sisterhood.

Diana was appalled; she’d spent a month’s salary on the gown. Le Queux himself had attended the fitting and adjusted the hem.

The Contessa held Diana's gloved hand in a sympathetic way, and said, "What bothers me most, is that he guaranteed that it was a unique one-of-a-kind creation. We've been taken by a huckster!"

Mrs. Crowley, a sharp and sardonic woman, surmised that they were – all three – victims of “Hoax Couture”.

Diana proposed action against the man, against Le Queux. She suggested that they confront him at his showroom on Fourteenth Street, on Saturday at 11.00am.

The plan was embraced with enthusiasm.

"Perhaps we can get lunch afterwards?" suggested the Contessa.

"Perhaps we should wear our gowns?" said Diana, laughing.