LITMIR.BIZ

       THE YOUNG LADY FROM THE HILL

      Edgar was working at Hopper Brothers Bookstore when he met his former Beverly school teacher Ethel Duke. She recognized him immediately, and after they got to talking, she invited him to a party. It was to be hosted by her cousins, the Salters of Hopkinsville, who routinely held “moonlights” in which their grand antebellum home, known throughout Hopkinsville as “The Hill,” was lit with colorful Chinese lanterns. Guests, mostly young people and students from Hopkinsville’s South Kentucky College, would stroll about the property under the moonlight and stars.

      Excited as Edgar was to attend, he was also worried. As he later admitted, he thought the guests would find him “uncouth and uneducated.” The decision, however, was out of his hands. Leslie forbade him to visit the Salter home, if only because its occupants were known liberals. They openly espoused such radical notions as a woman’s right to vote and hold public office. Everyone in Hopkinsville had heard at least one story of how the three older Salter sisters—Elizabeth, Kate, and Caroline—virtually ran “The Hill” and how their dinner guests included Jews, blacks, Hindus, and Native Americans. Leslie may have suspected that all kinds of “subversive” things occurred at The Hill and wanted Edgar to have no part of it.

      Edgar abided by his father’s decision. However, this didn’t keep him from finding out more about life at The Hill from his employer Harry Hopper’s girlfriend. Mary Greene, a teacher from South Kentucky College, knew the Salters well and had attended many a moonlight. Among other intriguing things she had to tell him were stories of the family patriarch, seventy-three-year-old Sam Salter, a respected civil engineer, architect, and non-practicing physician from Philadelphia. Since coming to Hopkinsville, he had overseen the construction of the city’s largest building projects, such as South Kentucky College and the Western Kentucky Lunatic Asylum and later became that hospital’s chief building superintendent. He was the radical thinker who set the tone at The Hill. But it was the Salter girls who were in charge. In addition to adding to the family’s extensive personal library and growing their own crops, medicinal herbs, and livestock, all of the Salter children and grandchildren were sent to college, studied foreign languages and music, and were taught the business and professional skills to carry the Salter legacy into the future.

      Elizabeth, or Lizzie, the eldest Salter girl, was extremely bright and well read. She married Sam Evans, the owner of the Hopkinsville coal yard and eventually had three children: Hugh, Lynn, and Gertrude, the youngest. The children were still infants when their father died suddenly from a burst appendix, and Lizzie had used the income from selling the coal yard to build a cottage immediately adjacent to The Hill. Though they lived next door, everyone dined together in the larger house and pitched in with chores.

      Kate Salter Smith, the next in line, was a gifted musician and could be counted on to entertain at the piano or read poetry. She was also quite the reader, kept up the family library, and was active in theatrical performances at her church. Also thanks to her, the family moonlights included such guests as visiting pastors and distinguished lecturers and musicians who came to speak or perform at the Union Tabernacle or Holland’s Opera House.

      Caroline, known as Carrie, was the youngest and most beautiful. A buyer for Anderson’s Department Store, who volunteered part-time as an art teacher at the Hopkinsville asylum, she was not as outspoken as Lizzie and could not write poetry or play music as well as Kate, but she had inherited the full range of Sam Salter’s talents and his fierce sense of independence. Edgar knew Carrie and some of her young cousins because they frequently stopped at the bookstore for college supplies.

      The more Edgar learned about the family, the more he regretted not taking Ethel Duke up on her invitation. Thus, when she stepped into the store the following month and issued a second invitation to attend a party at The Hill, Edgar immediately agreed. On this occasion he also caught a glimpse of Ethel’s best friend and second cousin, Gertrude, who sat in a carriage outside. Few words were exchanged that day, but Edgar had the distinct impression that Gertrude, the petite brunette in the back of the buggy, and not Ethel, was issuing the second invitation and was perhaps responsible for the first. His suspicions were confirmed when, disregarding his father’s edict, Edgar polished his shoes, oiled his hair, and attended the party the following Friday at The Hill.

      While making bookstore deliveries, Edgar had been inside several of Hopkinsville’s finest homes. They had been built by the wealthy tobacco planters and traders. These homes were more grand and imposing, had more land, and were more conveniently located near the city center. The Hill, however, built by Sam Salter himself, impressed him more than any other. Inside, Edgar was confronted by a rainbow of colors. There were deep purples and blues in the oriental carpets and Chinese porcelains, gold leaf on the picture frames, flaming red window sashes, and velvety greens and browns in the brocade upholstery. But what most captured his attention was the scent of perfume: lavender, primrose, chamomile, and honeysuckle. For a country farm boy, who had grown up in a cabin with a dirt floor, stepping into The Hill was like entering a new, exciting, and distinctly female environment.

      Ethel Duke took him by the hand and introduced him to the grey-haired Sam and his wife Sarah, and then to the ladies who ruled The Hill.

      Thirty-five-year-old Lizzie, Gertrude’s mother, was as petite and dark-haired as her daughter. She supervised the planting and harvesting of the vegetable gardens and the orchard in addition to seeing that the home was always full of flowers and color. She was also chiefly responsible for The Hill being a forum for political discussion. Elected or aspiring policy makers were always welcome at her frequent salons and dinner parties.