Queen of the Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara

Queen of the Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara

by Joan Murray
Queen of the Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara

Queen of the Mist: The Forgotten Heroine of Niagara

by Joan Murray

Paperback(New Edition)

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Overview

This novel-in-verse tells the fascinating story of Annie Taylor, who, in 1901, became the first person to plunge over the brink of Niagara Falls in a barrel. But as Joan Murray reveals, America didn't know what to do with a mature and self-possessed heroine: Annie Taylor, as an 'older woman,' was rejected and exploited and finally eclipsed by the man who repeated her stunt ten years later.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780807068571
Publisher: Beacon Press
Publication date: 04/07/2000
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.25(d)

Read an Excerpt




Chapter One


[ INITIATION ]

Sealed in my barrel,
with an anvil damped beneath my feet,
I sailed upright,
listened for Holleran's tap—
twice on the lid staves
—then they cut me loose.
I rode low, scraped the bottom stones,
clipped a rock, caught the current.
In a moment I was at the brink,
thudding on the cusp—
pitching forward, breathless, blind—
from a womb
of my own making.


Niagara!—over me!—under me!—
I spilled into it from every pore,
lost myself
in the blackness of its roar.
Something opened—grew wide—tore—
till every part of me was new:
Brain. Eyes. Tongue
—down to the wet soles in my shoes.
I took my measure, checked my sex
and, pleased with what I'd made,
I slapped my back between the blades
and took a breath
of consciousness.


[ EXPECTATIONS ]

What did they expect to find when they got at me?
At first, the lid was stuck, my air was thin,
I was at their mercy.
And then it was a hacksaw that revealed me:
Up from the river I came—
I was wet—and dizzy
—and deafened by the ringing of the bells,
but I could tell
that every part of me
was new!


I was exactly what I had expected:
I was alive
and I was what I had to show for it.
So I didn't stand serenely
like Jesus in the Jordan on hisbaptism day,
the sky opening and closing around him—
I had to work my own riggings,
supply my own light
—on that day I finally
came alive


there—beneath the mantel of the Horseshoe,
with the slender Bridal Veil, shimmering to my right
—and everyone's eyes on me,
everyone's hands, handing me along,
steadying me—reaching out to touch me.
You can see the Hallelujah in their eyes—
for that one moment—
before their lids screwed down again,
and they realized
I wasn't quite what they'd expected.


[ THE PHENOMENON ]

The church bells rang on both sides of the river,
spreading rumors of "a miracle."
And from everywhere they came to have a glimpse of it
—scrambling down the gorge
as if it were the final call at the final resurrection,
and then they saw me—
a puzzling phenomenon:
a woman, short and plain—and only slightly bruised,
moving dizzily among them
like a fly hatched by mistake in the winter sun.
I saw their puzzled looks—
and wondered if they'd like to put me back!


I had done what all the scientists had said no one could do
—I was, in fact, the first to ever try.
And though I lied about my age, I was really sixty-three,
I was plump and nearly grey
when they poured into the gorge to look at me—
a baffling phenomenon:
I was not a beauty or a man, yet there I was,
the center of attention.
Someone asked about my college degree,
they started questioning my intentions.
Then my manager came forward and gave a little wave
and handed me a single red carnation.


Now they waited for me to regale them:
they asked for details, observations—
"gory details!" someone called (he must have seen
my drooping shoulder and my head bruise),
but I was still too stunned to speak—
I was a difficult phenomenon.
Yet I tried to find some words that would please them.
But how could I begin to explain
what had occurred in that barrel
—that had changed my life into my own possession?
So I looked into their eyes, I even found a smile,
and I told them, I am alive.


[ DOING CARTWHEELS ]

I know you're wondering how I thought of such a thing—
an educated woman, at the beginning of the twentieth century,
and if I had a Muse to illuminate my story,
you might see the hand of Fate—
but all I can tell you on my own
is that my plan was born of Necessity.
I was in Bay City, Michigan,
a lumber town on the Saginaw
—in a studio with gaslights
and a bargain-priced, hardwood floor.
And since it was a time of promise and prosperity,
I found credit for a secondhand piano.


I had a hundred students from the finest families
and taught ballroom dance and manners, fall through spring
—culminating in a coming-out cotillion
into lumber-town "society."
But then the number dropped to seventy.
They were strained by the expense
of year-round classes,
their requisite corsages and livery coaches,
and embroidered satin gowns,
shipped C.O.D. from Chicago and New York.
So I modified my theme to "rhythmic dance"—
they got by in local taffeta for their seasonal recitals.


And when enrollment fell to fifty,
I gave them "Summer Promenades" and "Winter's Eve Tableaux"—
where they could learn some simple movements in a week—
and stroll about the streets
—or pose as the Fates or Muses (in homemade crepe paper gowns).
When the count had dropped to thirty,
I switched to acrobatics. (I had studied physical culture
and was a certified instructor
—the gifts were quite amazed to see my cartwheels).
But my rent was overdue, I'd run up a tab for food,
I needed winter boots,
and enrollment fell to twenty.


I held an evening tea-and-social for the parents.
I showed them my diploma from the Normal School in Albany.
I told them where I'd taught and been a principal.
Why, I could tutor every academic subject
—teach them French or Spanish—or instrumental music.
Why, I could even teach their daughters proper English
—Couldn't they see them,
with improved elocution,
moving comfortably "in fashionable society"?
But when I asked them what they wanted
—how I could serve them or their children,
someone asked if I'd demonstrate my cartwheels.


[ A WOMAN'S OPTIONS ]

I walked in my despair along the Saginaw—
listening to the water toss itself against the darkness,
watching it rush headlong on the same purposeless course
it had been following for seven thousand years.
Now and then, a human thing—
a piece of fence, a box or barrel—
bobbed to the surface, was whirled and upended,
battered from bank to bank—and kept on going.
I watched it twist beneath the same bruised moon
that was inching through the same forsaken sky
it had inched through fifty million times
with its borrowed light and empty mythologies.


I could see it was the ending of a story—
where a deluded mortal wakens from a dream.
My teaching days were gone—along with Saginaw "society."
Even if I placed an advertisement,
or paid a boy to put my card in every door on every city street,
at last I understood: it was now the twentieth century,
and no one wanted waltzes, no one set a value on civility.
I saw the options left me—
the options of all single, destitute women over forty:
I could turn to poorhouse charity
or keep my self-sufficiency by scrubbing pots and privies
—and spend my nights doing other people's laundry.


But another option spread itself before me:
I looked down at the river—the current that could not refuse me
—and its lethal invitation held the one endurable future I
could see.
I could see where it would drag me:
Up to Saginaw Bay and down through Lake Huron.
Down the St. Clair, the Detroit, and into Lake Erie.
Two hundred miles more till I reached the Niagara—
and there I saw what I'd become:
a splinter of wreckage, a shard of myself,
a thing beyond caring or meaning.
—And I wanted to be that—
I climbed the rail, stretched my arms—and gave myself to it.


How can I explain how something lifted me then—
not only off the railing and up from the river—
but held me hovering above a chasm more luminous than heaven.
And when it set me down again,
soaked to my skin, with my hair dripping down my neck,
I knew I'd seen—Niagara Falls.
Niagara!
I had seen it once before
from my father's wagon, the autumn I turned seven.
I remember how I dropped my apple from my hand
as my eyes climbed its brilliant plume of mist,
rising effortlessly to the light—


And how the rim of the Horseshoe came in sight,
and from its roiling crucible, the sound—
the sound!—as a billion simultaneous poundings
struck like thunder every knot down my spine.
I had no words then to describe its impact,
no means to distinguish its energy from mine.
It imparted everything to me
(a farmer's daughter from Auburn!)
—It entered me—vision and concussion,
and coded itself in my nerves and my brain.
And now in Bay City, on a rail above the Saginaw,
it revived itself: A ledge where I could leap—to save
my life.

[ A LONG PREPARATION ]

At once I knew the summons in that rescue:
Since the days of P. T. Barnum
half a century before,
all America knew "the challenge of Niagara."
It seemed every other year
another challenger appeared.
If he were a scientist,
there'd be reports in Leslie's Weekly
with pictures of his patented invention:
a cocoon-like boat or inflated suit—
an enormous rubberized gyroscope
—or other useless whirligig contraption.


And if he were an athlete,
there'd be columns on his regimen and stamina—
his chin-ups and his push-ups—
how he'd earned his toughness
in a Channel swim
—or at the fists of John L. Sullivan.
But despite their boasts and ballyhoo,
the clamoring of the press,
and Barnum's old prediction
of "eternal fame and wealth,"
in the end, not one of them
had the nerve to see it through.


So Niagara was still waiting,
unchallenged and unclaimed,
and what had I to lose to take it?
Hadn't I just stepped across a brink—
where something's hand shot through the mist
—to pluck me by the neck
and set me down?
And whether it came from the farthest stars
(or maybe from some corner of my brain),
it led me home to my boarding house,
and when I opened the front door,
I already knew its plan.


[ FIAT! ]

Then—like the Virgin Mary—
I was quickened:
I got down on my knees
and spread two lengths of pattern stock
and began to sketch a shape:
I rounded it and tapered it,
added and erased
—till I knew it would accommodate my size.
In the morning, I bought some cardboard sheets.
And, cutting them, with a care I usually saved for silk,
I had my second skin
of cardboard barrel staves.
I laced them piece to piece with twine
—then crawled inside the thing.


After, I sent a boy to fetch the cooper.
I seated him in the parlor with a cup of tea.
I didn't look up as I talked,
but stared at the gold rim of my cup—
my hand trembling
—not from fear—
but from the excitement of hearing my plan materialize.
When he finally understood,
he stormed through the door (with a trail of oaths
and all my neighbors' eyes).
But three days later,
once I'd pawned my mother's Milanese lace cloth,
I called him back
and watched him change his mind.


And then I got to supervise his workers:
I picked each piece of thick Kentucky oak.
I held it to the light,
examined it—for warps, knots, insect bores
—the slightest sign
of any imperfection.
I oversaw the oiling and the joining,
the welding of the hasp and iron bands.
I satisfied myself
with the articulation of the hatch.
I ignored their laughter.
I admired the lines of my vessel
—the contours (resembling mine)
—of the thing they said would be my tomb.


[ NIGHT TRAIN ]

I left Bay City, just as dark was coming,
and under the thickening stars,
I counted out each second of that night:
metal on metal—pounding an endless two-note meter
that took me down the peninsula,
across the basin and on to Niagara.
Pounding, Pounding,
so I couldn't sleep.
All night I watched the dark
—now and then a spark leapt from the track
and flickered for a second
in the grass.


And then it was miles and miles of blackness
—then a depot with a glove factory
—then a rail spur with a shoe factory.
Pounding, Pounding,
past a granery. Past a sawmill and a foundry.
Finally stopping at a station where a hackman's horse
drooped its head beneath a gaslight
—and the hackman,
calling up and down for passengers,
saw nothing spilling out
but barrels.


Pounding, Pounding,
past the mazy blur of forests—
past a bent shape
lit by a campfire—
past a shack—invisible—except for its single window—
which floated on the center of the night
—a framed and disembodied light—
wandering the firmament,
uncertain where to land
and finally dropping out of sight
behind me.


Pounding, Pounding, past the small stations—
with their slurred goodbyes,
the handshakes missed, the kisses that didn't land right.
Everything hurrying because the train was leaving
—so that even the urgent reminder
or the long-rehearsed blessing
came too late from below the window—
lips moving, but nothing heard,
and the train pulling off
in its hiss of steam.


Pounding, Pounding,
till the light gathered,
and there, at last, was Niagara
—arranged along its gorge—with all its grand hotels!
It was Sunday—I heard the pealing bells,
and envisioned, through the mist,
that a thousand white-gowned sleepers
were rising from their beds,
and hurrying to their windows
to salute me
as I came.


Then the pounding stopped, and the station came in sight—
with my manager, Tussie Russell
(and his bunch of red carnations).
I had met him once in Saginaw,
and now as I descended from the train,
I saw him wave to a woman
coming from the forward car.
I called his name—he recovered quickly,
and gave me his bouquet
—and told me he had booked me
in a boarding house.

Table of Contents

I: THE CALL
Initiation3
Expectations3
The Phenomenon4
Doing Cartwheels6
A Woman's Options7
A Long Preparation9
Fiat!10
Night Train12
II: THE GATE
Arrival17
A Toast18
Maud Willard20
Such Concern for Safety23
"One of Mine"25
Prodigals26
The Mob28
Carry Nation30
III: THE DESCENT
"She's Coming!"35
Descent36
Return38
Debriefing39
Vandals41
TheTriumphal Procession42
Visio Beatifica45
Offerings46
IV: THE ROAD
The Window51
Merchandise53
South to Spring55
The Southern Exposition56
The Woman-Cut-in-Half58
The Coming of the Hero59
Crawl on All Fours62
Chivalry65
V: THE QUEST
A Drama71
Grail Quest72
This Was the Man74
Rematch77
Maggie Kaplan79
The Same (New) One81
Solo Flight83
Immutability Canto86
VI: THE GOAL
Seed Time91
Summer Days92
The Second Coming93
The Hermit of Niagara96
In Principio99
E Pluribus101
Sic Transit104
Last Days107
Acknowledgments111

What People are Saying About This

Joyce Carol Oates

Imaginative, bold, and suspenseful; a tour de force of narrative, history, and 'myth.' Above all, it's a portrait of a woman so achingly intimate it will linger long in your memory.

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