by DM Bryan
Sadie, I had to leave off writing because my mistress called me away. She saw me scribbling and said I put her in mind of a thing she’d been meaning to do but never before had time. Oh, sister, what do you think she had on her mind? Why, only to write her will.
“Nay,” said my mistress when she told me what she would do, “leave off your weeping, my Betty, for you must shape the sentiments on my behalf, and I would not have your fine words obscured. Bring a new sharpened quill and whatever paper you have. A little might do, for I have not much to leave behind me.”
Bid me to staunch my tears as she might, I could not entirely control myself as I gathered my pen and my pages. Selecting the best of my empty pages, I came to sit beside her on the bed, my strongbox on my lap in place of a writing desk. I determined me not to wet the page and blot the ink, so I sniffed and dried my eyes with my sleeve. “There there,” said my mistress, patting my sleeves with her right hand and threatening to undo the hard work I had undertaken in stopping the flow of my tears. In this condition we began, my mistress dictating to me the words I include below, so that you might see the kind of woman she is.
I began the proper way by writing Imprimis, which is the way all such business must commence.
“Very good,” said my mistress, when I showed her what I had done. “It looks very fine to begin with a little Latin, but what means you by it?”
Then, Sadie, I was ashamed at my pretensions and would have crossed out the word, but my mistress only shook her head, a sheen appearing upon her forehead and lips. When I saw what speaking cost her, I made no more fuss, but wrote what she told me.
She said, and I wrote, “In the first place, my soul I leave to the scouring light of heaven, so that it might be as clean as possible. My body I commend to the earth, which lifts stains in its own manner. Whatever share I have of the cloth of common kindness, I would distribute liberally so that it might make good on the promise of its name. My share of rectitude, I leave to those who can measure it out most exactly, and as for my patience, I care little who gets that stained tat—how worn it must be by now. My vice I dispose of to those who would learn most by it, for I have learned little, and my folly I would keep beside me a little longer yet. I feel I have more need of it than I ever did before, now that I am dying.”
“Mistress,” said I, starting at the word.
“Hush,” said she.
We waited a while, she under the heap of patched linens and bleached damask and I with my strongbox in my lap and my bottle of ink upon the windowsill. From out the Bell yard came such sounds—snickers, clinks, bangs, smacks, the tide of drinkers’ voices—and smells—dung, shit, ale, smoke—I could not think upon the strangeness of the moment without taking a little comfort at its familiarity too. London afternoon light, long and low, streamed in through the window, for the day had been a fine one, of the sort that did not wish to abide by its proper season. Motes of dust sparkled between me and the glass. I watched them come and go.
At last, my mistress raised her head again and recommenced her will and testament. I wrote what she told me.
“My copper pots, my basins of both sorts, and all my washing apparatus I leave to the person who will follow me in my trade—that’s you, Betty, my dear,” she added. I nodded and wrote my name after her list of goods.
“My best skirts and stays you must give to them that fit them, for I must be buried in plain wool, as is the law. My laces, both the coarse and fine, are yours, Mrs. Betty, and I hope that you will be married in the latter, for those are a pair of sleeves that would lend elegance to any gown. My lady G— gave them me, and, but for a scorch mark from a candle on the left, which I have almost completely cut away, they will dress a maiden’s wrist to the fullest advantage. Your boatman will gape to see you in them, Betty, my dear—I hope I do not guess wrong?”
This speech left her breathless, and it was a few moments before I could put her in the way of knowing an item I hardly yet knew myself—that I had come to admire the boatman who took me rowing on the Thames. He had promised to end my aversion to water, but he had done more than that. In truth, I esteemed him more than any man I’d ever met and would marry him as soon as he found the courage to ask. And now we three know, Sadie, so I exchange you secret for secret.
At the hearing of my sentiments, my mistress let go a sigh and sank back into the bed, and promised me her small fortune for my marriage portion, telling me where I might find it hidden. “And,” I said, “you shall inherit my estate, mistress, should I go before you.”
“Ha,” was all she had to say to that proposition, but I could tell she was pleased by my effort at wit. I waited for her to say more, but she lay in the bed, keeping very silent. I could see the bulk of her rising and falling. So long as she was breathing, I was not afraid, and so I sat a spell longer, still with my ink unstoppered until the press of my box numbed my knees.
I looked around the pottage-coloured room and remembered the moment of my arrival, so many years ago. That day, my mistress inspected me where I stood, half hidden between two tubs and not much taller. The room seemed too large, holding only my mistress and myself, none of my siblings and cousins scurrying between the bed and the table. She kept me too busy to be homesick, and I had so much to learn. As my mistress’ custom expanded, more lead vessels and wooden tubs came to crowd the floor. Jugs and pitchers threatened to unseat the cracked, ceramic Mr. Nobody, that torso-less Dutchman who once had pride of place on the dresser top. Nails and washing lines proliferated, supporting a growing family of shifts, shirts, and stockings. A clothes press arrived, its pursed wooden lips suggesting the correct fold for m’lady’s tablecloths. Every time I turned its screw, I heard the creak of wood on wood, and my heart rejoiced at the sound.
Sadie, as I sat beside my sleeping, ailing mistress, I thought of Mr. Palmer’s wood and metal machines. I pressed my slippered feet into the wide floorboards, as if I would root myself forever. Through the grain, a furrow showed how we walked, my mistress and I, day after day. Over the years, our feet had made a single way for both of us, from table to dresser, from dresser to tubs, from tubs to balcony, from balcony to bed.
The room grew a little redder. Faint rays of a country sunset pierced the court’s jagged rooftops. As the sun westered, the chamber grew darker and smaller, and with the room my mistress shrank, until her squat shape seemed to sink beneath the bedding. When I could not see her loosened belly rising and falling, I could bear it no longer.
“Mistress,” said I, and she shifted a little. A moment later, she began to snore.
When only city light lit the room, and I saw all the familiar things by the intermittent flare of lighted links, I stoppered my ink and returned my strongbox to its place beneath the bed. Through the window came the always-roaring sound of the Bell. My fingers deft despite the dark, I unloosed my stays and shrugged off my gown. It fell in a pool at my feet, and I stepped from it like a woman from a bath. Then, in my shift and petticoats, for the night would still be cool, I lay me down beside my mistress and, tugging up the sheets and tired damask, I composed myself to sleep. And sleep I did, sister, drifting all night alongside my mistress, each of us afloat on our own underground river.
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I awoke to specks of city birdsong and pigeon-coloured light. Beside me, the bowed curve of my mistress’ stomach rose and fell with a delicacy of motion she could not manage in waking life. Not wanting to wake her and occasion a return of her discomfort, I lay perfectly still. Her sleep, I knew could not last for much longer, for this day would soon shape itself into a Sunday. Then, both St. Paul’s and the Bow bells would leap up and shout, and in that instant, all of us—those of us numb to our mortality and those of us alive to its touch—would start in our beds and know where we were. I waited, and for a time the bells waited with me, but at last the clamour came, rousing us both.
“Mercy,” said my mistress, “is that the time?”
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nbsp; Sister, with the new day pealing about us, I convinced myself my mistress would rally. I set about rising and preparing us both something to eat, stirring up the fire and toasting a little bread and Cheshire cheese by the weak flame. But when I offered my mistress the molten tidbit on the good pewter plate, she would only smile at me and bid me eat it myself. It would do her good, she told me, to see my appetite revive. She said if she could watch me address the bread with vigour, she would feel encouraged and so might, in time, eat also. Sadie, I ate the bread and cheese but every mouthful was like chewing a badly laundered handkerchief, stiff and over-starched.
“You must take yourself to service,” said my mistress, as soon as I swallowed the last of our breakfast, but I shook my head. Nothing would convince me to leave her. I could see how she blanched and sweated and hid her pain from me. Instead, I wiped clean the pewter, annoyed that I had dirtied it at all, and took out my papers and inkpot from under the bed and placed them on the table beside the door. Then I did not know what to do with myself and I wished I might work, but we did not wash on Sundays. I stood over the bed and wrung my hands until my lady bid me stop. “Read to me Mrs. Betty,” she said, “ ’twill ease my heart to hear your voice.”
Then, I took up The History of Glossolalia and read her a little from those pages. However, she soon bid me stop.
“You do not desire that I should read a novel on a Sunday, mistress?” said I.
“I do not desire that you should read that novel,” said she and would speak no more of poor Glossolalia.
“What would you have me read instead?” I asked, casting my eye over my sad assortment of pages. I did not mention that imitation of Hogarth’s Harlot, lost in a circumstance I did not like to remember. The other scraps and fragments in our residence seemed ill-suited to our situation. When my mistress did not answer me immediately I had me an idea, and excusing myself for only a moment, I ran down the stairs to rap on the door belonging to our landlady. Mrs. Hudson appeared at my knocking, dressed in her Sunday finery and attended by all her children, each tricked out in fresh ribbons and clean stockings. A line of starched tuckers and neatly pressed aprons, every one from my mistress’ hand. Reflect this Sunday morning on the virtues of new laundered shirts, I silently bade the children. But then I saw the very boy I wanted.
“John,” I said, “may I borrow your prize book? I will take it no further than upstairs, and you might have it of me as soon as you return from church.”
I could see immediately by John’s face that I might as well announced my intention to take his book to China. His mother looked equally askance. “His prize book?” said she. “His prize book?”
I ought not to have used that word.
“Mr. Watt’s hymns. Oh John, I would not ask but my mistress cannot go to church, and I would read to her something that might give us both comfort as she is so—”
I bit off what was to come next. My landlady’s face gave me to understand that I had already said too much. Mr. Hogarth might draw her face employing only a tiny “o” surmounted by two arches. “I hope,” said that lady, stretching her eyebrows even further toward heaven, “I devoutly hope, your mistress has not something catching.”
“She has no fever, nor any spots,” I said. “She has had the smallpox, as have I.”
I had not. ’Twas a lie, so help me—I never had it, as well you know, Sadie. The landlady came close to me by the door and peered up into my face.
“You came off most uncommonly well,” she said, all but touching my cheek. “Your skin remains very fine.”
“Perhaps it was only the cowpox,” I said, a little wildly, for no milkmaid was I, and the landlady knew it. “Or perhaps the … soap-pox,” I added.
“There’s no soap-pox,” said John, stating the obvious.
“No indeed, Master John. Oh, he is a clever boy, Missus Hudson. No wonder he took a prize at school.” I flattered the child, as his sisters, in a row behind him, rolled their eyes. John, to his credit, looked equally disgusted at my toadying, but his mother, although a modest woman on all other heads, smiled and nodded.
“John,” said she, “lend Mrs. Betty your book, for she knows its value, I’m certain.” John hesitated, but his mother added in a heavy whisper, “go now boy, for we can cleanse it afterwards with a sprinkling of vinegar,” and John went.
Book in hand, I flew back up the stairs, sorry to have left my mistress even for the duration of that short and absurd discourse. I found her sunk very low, responding only when she detected the pressure of my hand.
“Betty,” she said. “Oh my dear girl.”
Sadie, I dropped a few tears then, thinking perhaps they might fall unnoticed, but my friend opened her eyes and saw the wetness on my cheek. “Read,” she said, reaching up to pat the book in my hands.
I sat down beside her on the bed and opened Divine Songs at random. I read from Mr. Watts’ “Song XXII Against Pride in Clothes:”
Why should our garments (made to hide
Our parents shame) provoke our pride?
The art of dress did ne’er begin,
Till Eve our mother learnt to sin.
“Ah, ’tis as good as a sermon,” said my mistress, and her flagging energies appeared to rally a little.
I asked, “Shall I read more?” and when she nodded, I read:
Then will I set my heart to find
Inward adornings of the mind;
Knowledge and virtue, truth and grace,
These are the robes of richest dress.
“ ‘Inward adornings of the mind,’ very good,” said my mistress, “but if all the world should follow Mr. Watts and learn to dress in such spiritual raiment, how shall an honest laundress earn her living.”
“How indeed,” said I, for even as a child without a single fine piece of clothing I did not like to be told that I should be wicked if I finally acquired an apron with a bit of lacy trim. It seemed very hard, although I knew I was wrong to think so. “Perhaps there is another verse,” I asked my mistress, flipping through John’s book.
Sister, I know not if it was Mr. Watt’s verse or if something else began to animate my mistress, but she requested that I put away the book and prop her upright, supported by a shabby bolster. The execution of this manoeuvre brought her no little vexation, although she sought to hide from me the full extent to which she suffered. When we were finished, she reclined in relative comfort, with her shoulders and head well supported. Soon the colour returned a little to her cheeks, and she began to breathe more easy. Then it was that she announced her intention to leave to the world more than the will disbursing her worldly goods. “Which,” she said, “is a brief enough codicil to life.”
She instructed me to fetch my ink and paper again, which I did, and having seated myself again at her side, my strongbox desk in my lap, I began to write as she spoke. She began with her title, which I record exactly as she gave it me: An Analysis of Laundry. Written with a View of fixing ideas of Goodness, as seen by one who is only a Laundress. I know now that in naming her work, my mistress anticipates Mr. Hogarth’s own work, The Analysis of Beauty. There the great artist sought to fix beauty to the operation of a single line, just as my mistress, a laundress like no other, would string beauty upon a single strand of washing.
I, my mistress bade me write, her words sometimes coming in floods and sometimes in painful drops, consider what lessons might be taken from the practices of laundresses, who have access to so many rungs of the world, from those lofty realms inhabited by persons spotlessly garbed to those lower regions where dwell the indifferently clean. By considering, more minutely than before, the nature of washtubs, drying lines, and clothes presses, in their different combinations, I will raise in the mind the ideas of all the variety of laundry imaginable.
Here, my mistress broke off and asked that I bring her more water. Tenderly, I held the cup to her lips and she drank.
Then I took up my pen. She began to speak again, her voice not strong but determined.
I wrote: Chapter I. Of Repetition.
It may be imagined that the greatest part of a laundress’ duty is comprised of daily tasks, repeated for the express purpose of removing every trace of use from the warp and weft of every kind of garment invented for all manner of purposes. The scrubbing of clothes imparts a regular rhythm to our day, so that time itself is measured out in cuffs and ruffs, collars and hems, fronts and backs. We laundresses comprise a kind of clock, the cogs and gears replaced by thick, red arms plunging elbow deep into froth, rising, and plunging again. Each hour passes in woollen minutes, silken seconds. From lengths of bedsheet and tablecloth we twist liquid seasons, entire spans dripping at our feet. And when one day is wrung dry, we begin again. Once again, we set water steaming and scalding, a-dying with bluing or bubbling with soap. With our thick fingers, we sort the thread stockings from those made of worsted. Now we are tipping in the lace lappets, the silk handkerchiefs, the muslin petticoats. Steam leaps up. We poke the mass down to pot’s bottom, waiting for it to return, roiling, to the surface. Our hands grow red from repeated immersion. Squeezing, wringing muslins makes our shoulders broad. Each of our movements is practiced and sure, as we lift arms and sheets skywards. We sleep. We rise. We rest. We work. We tuck a dampened strand of hair beneath our caps. We again. We again, again. And again.