The Barefoot Brigade by Douglas C. Jones

Author:Douglas C. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Soldiers in Richmond searched for the things soldiers have always sought in wartime cities: strong drink, food, gambling, and women. The search was never difficult, because all of it was there in abundance.

They came with money and left broke, and some of them remembered very little of it afterward. Some drank themselves into oblivion early and lay on the sidewalks or in the gutters, the outraged citizens stepping over or around them, cursing the prostrate forms of men who were veterans of the railroad cut at Second Manassas or the thickets of White Oak Swamp or the stone wall at Fredericksburg.

But in whatever condition they were, the shopkeepers were ready to take their money, meager though it was; the gamblers took it, too, in rigged games, as did the profiteers in back streets for broken shoes or beefsteaks turned black with age or jackets made of shoddy that would not last out the month, even in good weather. And the saloonkeepers also ready to take it, for their cups of scalding liquor. And the whores, large fee or small.

Some effort was made by the established police and by the newer military police to stop prostitution in the city, but their efforts were mostly futile.

So many whores! Some of the ladies worked the streets, taking rooms in boardinghouses where they were becoming the only tenants because of rising rents. Others worked the saloons near the railroad stations and the warehouses. These were often seen hustling staggering soldiers into dark alleys, the business conducted there upright against a wall.

Some worked with pimps, who not only procured but might appear suddenly during the act of love with a leather stocking filled with buckshot, sapping down the passionate hero to empty his pockets and even take his shoes and trousers if they were salable.

And then there were the established houses, like Miz Rozella’s Afternoon Tea Sippin’ Society and Billiard Hall. Here were found the most desirable and most expensive women, the most professional of all the Richmond whores, some imported from France or Russia or even China. And here the pressure of purity from among the good citizens was considerably less than on the streets, because here there was more money involved, and where there was money, there were also policemen ready to share some of it.

Miz Rozella was a myth. Rumor had it the place was actually owned by one of Richmond’s more successful profiteers, growing rich on the war. But there was always a hostess at the door claiming to be Miz Rozella, dressed richly, with high ruffles on neck and sleeves of a silk or taffeta gown that might be from Europe—surely as dear as gold, having come through the blockade—and a large ivory brooch at her neck with the profile of some Greek goddess, likely Aphrodite.

All the ladies in Miz Rozella’s were well dressed and modest. At least when they were downstairs. There they showed bare skin as stingily as did the good matrons of Richmond, and when they went abroad, the ladies of the Tea Room never rouged their cheeks or touched their lips with color.

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