by DM Bryan
“Red ink,” she reminded me, “is what financial gentlemen use for the writing down of sums, especially those that must be paid out. If the colonel has been fighting with anyone, Mrs. Betty, it is sure to be with the man who keeps his receipts.”
I asked how she knew such a thing, for her understanding to me appeared to extend to matters far beyond the mysteries of her trade, but she only said, as she had on so many other occasions, that “secrets wash out with the linens.”
I told her I thought the romance between Miss G— and the colonel was certainly over if his financial matters stood in such a sorry condition. My mistress said nothing to that.
We had no further news of any of the parties for some time. To our surprise, Mrs. Susan did not call for the apron—the piece having turned out very well, the silk quite restored to its former glory—but in her place came an excessively nice person who identified herself as Miss G—’s own lady’s maid. She was very exact in her conduct and in her concern for her reputation, and she was equally scrupulous when she came to consider our work. The apron she spread out by the window, examining it by the strength of the light filtering through the yard, for on this day the courtyard was filled with rare beams of sun. At length, the maid approved our work and paid my mistress what she asked, and a little more besides. However, we did not dare ask her to tell us what had come of the matter between the colonel and her lady. Only when she stood ready to depart, poised like a curving mark against our bright doorway, did I have the sauce to ask how fared Mrs. Susan. I hoped, I said, that good person’s health did not keep her indoors when the weather was so very fine.
“Mrs. Susan,” said the lady’s maid, “has been dismissed.”
“Indeed,” said my mistress, “that is surprising news—and disappointing. She is a particular friend of ours, and a goodly woman besides.” I felt a wash of pride at my mistress’ loyalty.
“I cannot stay to engage in tittle-tattle,” said the lady’s maid, but neither did she leave.
“Certainly, it cannot be tittle-tattle,” said my mistress, “if you were to do us the kindness of informing us how our friend fares. I cannot guess what might have caused Mrs. Susan’s departure from the family, for she has always held Miss G— in the highest esteem.”
“Well I might tell a little,” said the scrupulous person on the threshold, and she turned and re-entered our poor room.
On account of the water we needed to boil, we always kept a good fire burning, which made the room very warm indeed, but the woman stood before the hearth and baked in her fine clothes. My mistress motioned to me, and I lifted a pile of drying cloths from a chair and offered it to her. At first, she did not seem to understand me, but then she took the seat, dropping down with such a whoosh of skirts that her lappets floated upwards, giving her the look of a rabbit. I thought my mistress might offer her some of the cordial she and Mrs. Susan liked to sample, but she did not. Neither did my mistress sit down beside the lady, but stood waiting for that person to speak.
“You might have guessed from my remarks,” the lady’s maid began, “that I have some knowledge of the manner in which Mrs. Susan was dismissed. The comings and goings of housemaids are a matter for the housekeeper, but in this case, I am persuaded to take a special interest. Indeed, my own character is such that I hate to see an injustice done.”
“An injustice?” I said. “Was Mrs. Susan done an injustice?”
The lady’s maid placed her hands together in her lap. “Mrs. Susan overstepped her place,” she said, “and involved herself in matters that were not her business.”
“What did she do?” said my mistress. “If I may be supposed to be free of the same stain.”
“She allowed a stranger to enter her mistress’ house—a man quite unknown to that lady.”
“But she was discovered?”
“I learned of the matter when she came to fetch my own lady, Miss G—.”
“Your lady? Not Mrs. Susan’s employer, who is mistress of that house?”
“Miss G— was the lady to whom the gentleman wished to speak.”
“What did you do next?”
“I did not like the affair—a stranger unknown to the house, admitted through the wiles of a housemaid to see a young woman with no male relation to protect her. I went to the drawing room and saw the gentleman myself, demanding to know his business with my lady, but he said it was a matter for her ears only.”
“So you went to your mistress’ cousin, the lady of the house?
She nodded. “I went immediately and I told her of Mrs. Susan’s irregular conduct toward a stranger who would not confess his business. My lady’s cousin grew alarmed and came with me to the drawing room. She too examined the stranger, who sat bold-as-you-please in one of her wing chairs.”
“And what did he say?”
“Only that it was a private matter between himself and Miss G—.”
“Did you not think to summon Miss G— and so make an end of the affair?”
The scrupulous person did not seem capable of immediate speech, and she gazed at my mistress with every appearance of deep thought. At last she said, “My lady was at that moment upstairs, in a private interview with the colonel, and we hoped a marriage contract might be the happy result. Her cousin and I judged it best not to disturb her with idle matters. In short, we sent the gentleman on his way, with a warning not to return.”
“But it was precisely on the matter of the marriage contract that the stranger wished to speak with Miss G—.”
The scrupulous person looked at my mistress for a moment or two. “How could you possibly know that?”
My mistress only busied herself with the washing. She went to a sideboard where stood a number of bowls and pitchers containing the sundry items required by our trade. She selected a large earthenware jug and brought it closer to her washtub.
“And Mrs. Susan?” I asked.
Miss G—’s maid said, “Mrs. Susan immediately repeated her fault, overstepping her place once again. I caught her at the foot of the stairs where she was making to warn my lady of the gentleman’s visit. I pulled her back, and her mistress spoke very sharply to her. Then, sniffing and wiping her nose, Mrs. Susan said some very shocking things about the colonel. My lady’s cousin cried out how wicked it was to raise a false report, proving, I think, that she was as much the colonel’s advocate as I. Pressed to recant, Mrs. Susan refused, and she was—I blush to own it—dismissed on the spot.”
My mistress allowed the faintest look of disapproval to show on her fleshy face. She watched as the excessively scrupulous person, seeking to disguise her discomfort in action, bent to the earthenware container, the better to examine its contents. At last, my mistress said, “You might take care,” but already the poor woman had come within smelling distance of the jug, brimming with sharp-smelling urine for whitening. Snapping stiffly like an apron in a breeze, she righted herself. When she turned back to us, her face was wet with tears, and I sincerely hope they were the product of an honest repentance for her treatment of Mrs. Susan.
Whatever the cause, Miss G—’s maid took out a fine linen handkerchief, edged with lace, and daubed at her eyes.
“And now they are married,” she said, “and already he spends her money at such a pace my lady grows quite distracted over his love of luxury. Yesterday, she went to see a man, so prudent in the managing of estates as to serve many a rich man as a kind of privy-counsellor. This gentleman told her something very shocking. Acting out of kindness and on the suggestion of some person he would not name, he had already attempted to pay her a visit, wishing to warn her of the colonel’s financial improprieties before she took any fatal step. Alas, he was turned away before he could communicate what he knew, and now her money is no longer her own, and so even he is powerless in her cause. My lady returned entirely discouraged and will not leave off weeping.”
And here the maid s
uited her actions to match those of her lady, until droplets tumbled unchecked from her pointed chin, dampening her fichu. “You must believe, I did not know,” she said. “He was so handsome, the colonel.”
My mistress crossed her arms against her very clean tucker. She stands not much taller than a boy and is grown nearly as broad, and when she places herself in this posture, she shows herself a person to be reckoned with. “You do not need me to tell you what you must do,” she said, “but it must be done if you are to have any peace at all.”
At this the lady’s maid lifted her wet face. She reemployed her kerchief, this time to apply some real order to her features, and then she rose, straightening her dress.
“As to my lady’s marriage?” she said.
“As to that, I have no remedy.”
Nodding her lace cap, the lady’s maid departed without another word, and I hoped she understood the considerate usage she’d had of my mistress, who I thought had been kinder than she deserved. In setting that lady to remedy the wrong she’d done, my mistress had schooled her in the correct method of lifting a blot from a conscience and yet had not asked for so much as a farthing.
The lady’s maid proved to be as scrupulous in doing right as she had been in meddling. Mrs. Susan resumed her former station as housemaid in the family where she had been dismissed. The cousin, her mistress, showed her restored servant no prejudice, but rather that chastened lady found every opportunity to seek Mrs. Susan’s sage advice. In time, the death of the family’s housekeeper—a very aged lady—allowed Mrs. Susan herself to assume the position, in the exercise of which she continues to give her mistress every satisfaction. Her happiness is no more than is due any one of us who has shown ourselves not only without spot or blemish but resistant to both.
As for me, I had one more question. “Mistress,” said I, “who do you think advised that prudent financial manager, the rich man’s privy-counsellor, to seek out Miss G—?”
“Shush,” said my mistress. “And pass me the urine.”
But I can see, Justice Gonson, that your constables grow weary of my account of Mrs. Susan and the lady’s maid, for while such matters make profitable hearing for servants, I discern that they do not entertain gentlemen whose need for brevity is paramount. You expected my story to concern, not laundresses and housemaids, but the colonel himself.
As for that intemperate person, I know only what all the world knows. The newlyweds set up in a house near to King’s Square, where the colonel, in accordance with Mrs. Susan’s intelligence of him, proves in every way a great rake. He spends his new wife’s fortune at prodigious speed, and poor Miss G— is now styled a fine Lady but with empty pockets. For all her care, she was finally betrayed by her own heart, the loan of which was everything the colonel needed to crack open her strongbox. And even such an excellent laundress as my mistress has no remedy for the complete discolouring he has given to both their names.
Now, I see that my mistress’ colour has returned to her, and she breathes evenly again. If you would be so kind as to call for a chair, Justice Gonson, we are ready to go home.
Chapter 3
Letters between Mrs. Betty, in the parish of St. Paul, and her sister, Mrs. Sadie Nutbrown, who has gone to live in the country.
Bell Inn Yard off Fryday Street, 1732.
My dearest Sister,
My fingers are sore from washing and can hardly hold a pen, but I must write. My mistress works hard, and I am always eager to follow her model. We scrub and scrub, until she tells me, “Mrs. Betty, off you go now and write a few lines to that sister of yours before she forgets you.” And so I write, although I have scarce the energy to hang out my thoughts like stockings on a drying line.
Have you forgotten me yet? I have almost forgotten you. How cruel you are to have married a man who lives in distant Hackney, and how hard you are to relocate to the country, following that handsome Arcadian, your bridegroom. I commend your choice of Henry Nutbrown, who will make a fine husband, but by your new settlement you have taken yourself beyond the realm of ordinary discourse, and that is an act I must condemn with all the righteous anger of a sister left behind. If you needed to marry, I do not understand why you could not have chosen one of the many dirty fellows who haunt our lane. Any one of them would have been happy to subsist off the labour of a hard-working female like you. Indeed, I should take one as my own husband quick enough—just as soon as I rid myself of this curious disinclination to marriage, for which I cannot quite account. Although I do remind myself of how, from our earliest infancy, you and I were able to observe repeatedly the follies of a bad union. And as to that, our mother fares not at all well: our father is gone again, and she does not know if she wishes for him to return or to stay away. She asks heaven for both, but God, wise in all things, refuses to decide when she cannot—alas, this is not the subject I intended, and I hoped to write a letter and not a book.
I am writing to you in your newly countrified state so that I might parade before you the many attractions of the town—well, of the city, I suppose, for other than washing the stains from their undergarments, I know little of the inhabitants of those western reaches. Regardless, here is a glimpse of the high life: my mistress and I have been taken up by the constables and brought before the law. Some days past, we were invited to the home of Justice John Gonson, a man of great renown for his very moral campaign, cleansing London’s stews. Upon arriving at his handsome home, we were entertained by him in a back parlour filled with dog-eared papers and dusty books. Alas, we were not taken as whores or highwaymen, but rather as witnesses, and so our reputations continue unmade. I told my mistress such a lack of notoriety could only harm our business, but she patted my arm and told me I was subject to such strange fantasies as could only come from books.
“No, mistress,” I told her, “the fantasies in books must come from nature first, for even the most unlikely of circumstances must have one foot in experience.”
“No experience can teach that it is good business to be taken as a highwayman,” she said.
“Unless you would write a book,” said I, and she agreed that authorship was a business apart from the others.
But Sadie, you will want to hear more about Justice Gonson. You must imagine a wig, a small pair of eyes, and a ruffle, well-wetted with lashings of his dinner. If you wish a fuller portrait you may see one in Mr. Hogarth’s remarkable series pertaining to a harlot, just published. Wiser folk than I have found Mr. Gonson twice in those pictures. They say it is he who arrests the harlot in the third print and who is hanged in a little graffito in the fourth. I myself have not seen the whole series, but I would like to very much. The Justice gave us only a glimpse of one print, which showed a pretty maid emerging from the York wagon, with the signpost for our Bell Inn behind her. Justice Gonson told us that this picture bears investigation and that we might help him get to the bottom of things if we would answer honestly his questions. Now, I hear you asking me what is that bottom for which the Justice delves, and why does he need a pair of laundresses to assist him in his digging. Sister, I do not know. I can only tell you we answered the Justice’s inquiries as fully as we could, whereupon he thanked us very genteelly and sent us away in a chair each. Since then, my mistress and I have been all in a lather, but that is our usual condition, and I wonder if I will ever tire of jests about laundry.
Joking aside, I do love to be a laundress, sister. All London comes to our door with their shirts and their socks, and they bring us a great deal more besides. Since our encounter with the Justice, the world comes to tell us that Mr. Gonson’s interest in the Harlot’s case is far from disinterested. We are told that the gentleman takes to heart the charge that his moral program against harlots does more harm than good. Maids and housekeepers alike whisper that Hogarth’s pictures show his Harlot happy and healthy before her incarceration in Bridewell, and her true decline begins with Gonson’s entry at her door. Some go so far
as to say that the Harlot’s death is a charge upon the Justice’s bill—that his actions as good as killed the woman.
Those same tongues tell that Justice Gonson would clear his name by refuting the notion that the drawn figures in the prints have real names, which is the very premise that makes London love Mr. Hogarth. I am obliged to think this last is partially true, for when we went before him, Justice Gonson had a dozen questions about one figure amongst the others—the man in the doorway, standing with his hand in his pocket. Did not that man have a face like a hundred other men? Had we not passed dozens just like him on our way to his house? Did we know that Charteris, the rape-master general of England, lies dead and buried—his coffin drawing forth curses and rotting fruit as it passed in the street?
Yes, yes, we said, agreeing with the Justice that Mr. Hogarth’s tale must be feigned and all the figures figments. Privately, I wondered why the Justice could not see that the defense of such a bad man as Charteris could do his own name no good, but men are ever thus. In order to prove their innocence, they would come to the assistance of every villain and blackguard within city walls and without. It is a kind of fellow feeling in them, and why they do it, I cannot say.
My mistress agrees that the face in the doorway might belong to one hundred men, but her reasons are not Justice Gonson’s. She says she’s seen many a spill of fish-sauce on a napkin that seems to have eyes, nose, mouth. Mr. Hogarth’s skill at engraving improves upon fish-sauce, but even his most telling detail is no more than ink on a page. Ink might stain a reputation, and it might cause a conscience to bleed, but an impression taken is not the same as the object that made it, and my mistress takes pains to distinguish between the two.