In life, Elizabeth Adora Holland was known not only for her loveliness but also for her moral character, so it was fair to assume that in the afterlife she would occupy a lofty seat with an especially good view. If Elizabeth had looked down from that heavenly perch one particular October morning on the proceedings of her own funeral, she would have been honored to see that all of New York’s best families had turned out to say good-bye.
They crowded Broadway with their black horse-drawn carriages, proceeding gravely toward the corner of East Tenth Street, where the Grace Church stood. Even though there was currently no sun or rain, their servants sheltered them with great black umbrellas, hiding their faces—etched with shock and sadness—from the public’s prying eyes. Elizabeth would have approved of their somberness and also of their indifferent attitude to the curious workaday people pressed up to the police barricades. The crowds had come to wonder at the passing of that perfect eighteen-year-old girl whose glittering evenings had been recounted in the morning papers to brighten their days.
A cold snap had greeted all of New York that morning, rendering the sky above an unfathomable gray. It was, Reverend Needlehouse murmured as his carriage pulled up to the church, as if God could no longer imagine beauty now that Elizabeth Holland no longer walked his earth. The pallbearers nodded in agreement as they followed the reverend onto the street and into the shadow of the Gothic-style church.
They were Liz’s peers, the young men she had danced quadrilles with at countless balls. They had disappeared to St. Paul’s and Exeter at some point and then returned with grown-up ideas and a fierce will to flirt. And here they were now, in black frock coats and mourning bands, looking grave for perhaps the first time ever.
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They stood still with downcast eyes, waiting for Henry Schoonmaker, who emerged last. The refined mourners could not help a little gasp at the sight of him, and not only because he was usually so wickedly bright-eyed and so regularly with a drink in hand. The tragic irony of Henry appearing as a pallbearer on the very day when he was to have wed Elizabeth seemed deeply unfair.
The horses drawing the hearse were shiny black, but the coffin was decorated with an enormous white satin bow, for Elizabeth had died a virgin. What a shame, they all whispered, blowing ghostly gusts of air into one another’s ears, that an early death was visited on such a very good girl.
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