Published in Salt Magazine, August 2016
Oh, dear reader, how do I say a proper hello? At my last writing for Salt, I was saying goodbye — a short-lived goodbye to Wilmington. How funny that I should be back saying hello. That’s the thing about a port city, people always coming, going.
More important, how will I show you all the things I wish to at once? Impossible. But I will try. Some things will be remarkable. Some will not. It will be like a viewfinder of vacation slides – click – Paris – click – Bejing – except more like – click – unexplainable shoes – click – historical tidbit – click – painting of an ice cream. See? You’ll catch on.
I hope that you will. I know you think you’ve lost your Front Street Spy, but just like the column’s namesake, Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow, spies ferret in networks. There’s a term, “brush contact,” for when two spies meet briefly. We only look like two ships passing in the night. My predecessor was your Wild Rose. Consider me your Belle Boyd.
Maria Isabella “Belle” Boyd was as wild-west as the any of the lady spies of her day, and we actually have quite a bit in common. She was from Virginia. So am I. She was an excellent conversationalist (see “flirt”). Guilty. She likes her hair unmanageably long. As do I. She shot a man when she was eighteen years old for being rude. I did not do this, but I did write a country song about this very thing after an unpleasant cat-calling experience in Memphis; it started off, “I’m twenty-one / woo! / with fire hair and porcelain skin...” The refrain went “Look out boys on Beale Street / here I come.” I digress.
Belle passed through Wilmington on a win. She is rumored to have delivered key information that led to Jackson’s recapturing Front Royal. Sure, she’d done some prison time, was a Confederate courier for a losing war and had been banished to the South, but you know what they say about counting your blessings. It was May 1864 and I bet she stayed at a fancy inn downtown with blooming azaleas — perhaps strolling by the house I would come to live in — before stepping off the dock into a new adventure. This boat ride ushered in a marriage, a memoir and an acting career. (So far Wilmington has blessed me with two out of three, but I’m still waiting on the trifecta.)
Like Rose Greenhow’s, Belle’s boat was also intercepted by the Union army. Only a few months later (October 1864) Rose famously met her tragic end when her escape-dinghy capsized and she drowned in the Cape Fear River — as legend says — held down by the gold coins (fruits of her memoir) sewn into her skirts. When the Union stormed her ship, however, Belle — ever the actress — managed to avoid both death and imprisonment by sweet-talking a Yankee soldier. Stockholm syndrome or not, they married and stayed together a few years abroad. She married twice more. After penning her memoir, she came back to America and took to the stage in earnest to support her children. The Siren of the Shenandoah laughed at the easy life.
She even died onstage. This time moth-not-bullet holes in her crinoline.
If I turn out half that interesting, it will be well worth reading my column. Plus, if we’ve learned anything from Wild Rose, it’s to let go of the past, even if it was rich like gold.
Isabel Zermani, our senior editor, prefers the storied life.