The Doll Factory

by Elizabeth Macneal

  Yours,

  L.

  6 Colville Place

  APRIL 20TH

  Dear Iris,

  I spoke with your matron who informed me that you are seeking a position in a shop in Covent Garden.

  From a selfless perspective, I beg you to reconsider: your painting abilities are fine, and I am of the persuasion that you would be making a grave error in quitting this so soon, when a promising career is within reach.

  From an entirely selfish perspective: you are missed.

  I will be taking a walk in Regent’s Park at four o’clock and beg you to meet me at the south gates – I can explain my situation.

  Yours,

  L

  6 Colville Place

  APRIL 20TH

  Dear Iris,

  I was disappointed not to have the opportunity to walk with you this afternoon and to offer an explanation in person.

  I will set out my situation here, because it is important to me that you understand the truth of matters. It is difficult to know where to begin. It feels strange, as if you should be here before me, not as the distant reader of words on a page. I’ve never liked letters for that reason; such scant compensation for real company!

  But perhaps it is easier if I don’t imagine you here; if I write this as if narrating the history of some other person.

  It began, I suppose, because of our fathers, that is Sylvia’s and mine. They were friends at school and later Oxford; Clarissa and Sylvia were of the exact age and were sweet companions; as children we spent our summers together.

  Sylvia’s family had always intended her for me, and she told me later how her mother weaned her on stories of me: from the age of ten, her mother would buy her a new ribbon for her dress, or force her to sit for hours with hot irons in her hair if there was a chance of encountering me. I returned from school one summer when I was fifteen, and I saw Sylvia as if for the first time. I believed myself to be struck by Cupid’s bow: instantly and deeply in love.

  Her family invited me and Clarissa to stay with them in the Trossachs, and I took my sketchbook and a few cakes of watercolour paint. Sylvia and I were allowed the freedom usually granted to children; we walked alone by the lochs, dammed streams – I digress. The point is, we became infatuated with one another. It was all quite idealistic, all quite naïve. I fed my love like a poisonous bonfire, nourishing it with poetry, music, art – all insufferable, but these were the only lessons I had on love. I ask you to remember my age at this time. I believed that love was supposed to consume me, conquer me. It would crush me in its great maw and make me miserable, and I could only succumb.

  Sylvia’s feelings mirrored my own: we exchanged terrible poetry, wrote gushing letters to one another late at night, which we would press into each other’s hands the next day. We pictured ourselves as figures in a painting, each gesture carefully considered.

  Of course, our parents thought it was a childish passion which would pass and hopefully develop into something more substantial & lasting, and my mother in particular urged me to postpone the match for several years so that I could travel to the Continent and secure an independent source of income. We dismissed their concerns. After all, we reasoned, how could her parents, with their pitiful damp tenderness for each other, or my mother, privately joyful after my father’s death, grasp a love deeper than anything which had been felt for centuries?

  We decided to elope, a selfish plan from the beginning. We married secretly at night, even though our parents would likely have consented had they been consulted. This was the ridiculous fact of it: we wanted to create a notion that it was a forbidden, undying love, when it was all a creation.

  We were unhappy almost immediately. Our ideals quickly crumbled when we were faced with the reality of little money, the irritation of each other’s company. She was not what I thought she was – I had built her in my mind, and she me. We disappointed each other. Because what disappointment is flesh and blood when pitted against romantic legends? In hindsight, I can see I was difficult, far from an idyllic companion. I was scarcely seventeen – what hope did I have? I wanted to spend my time painting, or reading, or travelling, not tending to her every whim. As it turned out, we had little in common, and when the infatuation passed, we realized there was nothing left beneath it.

  The disappointment caused an illness in her, one where the melancholia of the mind infected the body. She lay in bed all day. Small things angered her. She would scream if I read a newspaper as she believed it carried a contagion, and any smells would cause her to sicken. She would sooner burn damp towels than move them, and she expected me to sit for days at her bedside, comforting her and cradling her.

  I spent money on doctors, we journeyed to Venice, to the Alps, and she could not bear me. We had nothing left to say to each other. I reread her early letters to me, and I realized I could see nothing of myself in them. I wasn’t real. Ultimately, she insisted she could not live in the same house as me, and frankly it was a blessed relief: within two years, she had returned to her family in Edinburgh, and our son went with her. I have never felt a desire to divorce her, to accuse her so openly of wrongdoing, and contaminate both our names. Indeed, I will never. Now it seems her illness is no feint, or so the doctors say. She has a growth, or a swelling in her. They say it is a cancer. Clarissa is in Edinburgh, nursing her old friend. Sylvia writes to me incessantly – demanding I attend her, saying she’s dying. But whenever I visit, I find her a little peevish, propped up in bed making demands for watered broth and sweetmeats. And she storms at me and I can’t bear it.

  What more is there to say? These are the salient facts: a wife, living apart from me. Little scandal, as we have lived apart for five years, before anybody had heard my name. I regret it all immensely.

  And why do I tell you this? Because I hope that you will return as my model and as a painter in your own right. I hope we will take walks in the park, laugh at the priggishness of Millais, and have our paintings hung side by side. I hope you will accept my imperfect situation and realize that you are in no way stained by association with me. That this changes little. That our friendship must be based on truth.

  Please, I beg you to visit me tomorrow.

  Sincerely,

  Louis Frost

  Charlotte Street

  APRIL 21ST

  Dear Mr. Frost,

  I will visit you tomorrow forenoon. I thank you for setting out your situation in such detail, and I am grateful to you for sparing me the time to reflect on my position. However I must ask you to provide me with a reference.

  Sincerely,

  Iris Whittle

  Sylvia

  Louis has tidied the sitting room, even by Iris’s definition of the word. The logs are stacked in the basket, the coal in the scuttle, and the periodicals and books indexed on the shelves.

  Louis is sitting opposite her in an armchair. Less than a week has passed since his son appeared at the door, and yet he seems almost as skinny as Millais. His eyes are ringed, his skin whiter than china. He does not sprawl, does not fill the room with his gestures and laughter. He sits as stiffly as a match in a box: ankles tucked together, hands in his lap.

  ‘I bought your favourite toffees. I’ll fetch them from the scullery,’ he says, moving to stand, and shifting his gaze from the ceiling to the door.

  Even now, she thinks he is handsome – his tight curls, the quiet strength in his forearms – and she feels a sudden racketing of desire. He is so close to her; she could hold him. Where did wanting to paint end and wanting Louis begin?

  She waves her hand to dismiss his offer.

  ‘How are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Quite well, thank you,’ she says, addressing the mantelpiece. She feels suddenly alone, and she realizes that she wants her sister, that she misses her so intensely that it is a struggle not to cry.

  She has written to Rose, but received no reply. She remembers when they made flags out of wallpaper, and pushed through the crowds at St James for a glim
pse of the little Queen after her marriage to Albert. When they would confide everything to each other in whispers, sucking the rich truffles given to her by her gentleman and giggling over Rose’s report of his declarations.

  We believe you have been hideously misled, tricked into a course which you cannot wish to take.

  ‘You read my letter,’ Louis says. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him crane forward, and she feels a flush of rage, at Louis, at Sylvia, at her own stupidity in nursing so many foolish hopes. ‘Will you allow me to explain more?’

  ‘Really, I see no need. Indeed, you owe me nothing except my drawings and a letter of recommendation. That’s why I’ve come.’

  He scoffs. ‘You can’t possibly mean that.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she snaps. ‘Do you have them?

  ‘I meant that I owed you an explanation.’

  The air is thick. Woodsmoke and damp wool.

  ‘There is a position I have applied for – at a milliner’s in Covent Garden.’

  ‘You might as well work in a factory,’ he says.

  ‘Who are you to tell me—?’

  ‘You’ll hate it. You’ll hate the monotony. You’ll have no creative freedom, you realize. You’ll be entirely unremarkable, just a factory hand, referred to by nothing except the function of one of your limbs, as if you’re a cog.’

  ‘What do you know of it?’ she says, her voice lifting a pitch. ‘I came for my reference. If you won’t give it to me, then I’ll leave now.’

  ‘You’re right. I won’t.’

  ‘You won’t provide me with a reference?’ She is aghast.

  ‘If it makes you stay, then no, I shan’t.’

  ‘But you can’t do that,’ she says, and she bites back her anger. She won’t rise to it; she will thwart him by remaining calm.

  ‘There’s really no need for you to leave. I don’t see why—’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because . . .’ She wants to say, Because you are married and I am frightened.

  ‘You’re afraid,’ he says.

  ‘Why would I be afraid?’ she tries to keep her voice steady, but her temper breaks away from her. ‘And I wish you would stop trying to tell me how I feel. You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he says, with sudden vehemence. ‘You give away so little – you are so closed, so difficult for me to understand—’

  ‘I am closed?’ she snarls back, and her words spill out, more forceful than she can believe. ‘While you have a wife – a wife – who is kept out of the way in Edinburgh so you can undertake flirtations with your models. You talk about honesty in art, and truthfulness, but you’re a fraud, a hypocrite – and –’ she remembers Rossetti’s snide remarks about Louis’s knowledge of the matrimonial condition – ‘and I’m just a toy you can pick up.’ He tries to seize her wrist. ‘No! Do not – don’t insult me with your ministrations – your advances.’

  ‘My advances? I’ve done my best to hide my feelings. I could easily have seduced you.’

  ‘You could not!’ she fires back, and she wants to smash the smug vase of flowers on the table. ‘How dare you! I care nothing for you – and I’ve told you before, I’m not like your other girls.’

  ‘I know you aren’t! They meant nothing – mere rookery girls.’

  ‘How can you speak of them like that? They are people, too.’

  ‘You think they cared for me in any way? At least now I know where you stand.’ She can see his hands outspread, shaking, out of the corner of her eye. ‘You care nothing for me – fine, fine. Well, I’m sorry for liking you – I’m sorry for thinking you were different. I’ve been a fool all of this time, to think that there was even a slight chance – no – you care nothing for me!’

  She stares at him, and her limbs are treacle-slow. His hair is ruffled, and he rubs at his eyes. His words echo. A slight chance . . .

  He is turned away from her, and she could press him to her, kiss him, if she didn’t detest him so much.

  She pulls her shawl about her, readying herself to leave, but he risks a slight glance at her, and she cannot stop herself. She cannot let him go – she cannot. It feels, in that moment, that she must have all of him or nothing at all, and she cannot bear to lose him and all that she associates with him: his hand over hers, guiding her pencil across the page. A slash of bright red on a canvas. A painted strawberry, perfectly ripe, the gleam of its catchpoint.

  She moves towards him, and her lips are on his. She can taste his mouth, its pipe smoke, and she feels a creep of shame, of desire. She always told herself that she would resist this, that she would hold up her hand and remind him of her respectability, her honour. And yet, when his kisses slide down her neck, and she slips her hand under his vest and maps the smooth warmth of his chest – she cannot stop herself.

  ‘Iris—’ he says, but she kisses his mouth quiet, and pulls him on to the sofa, on top of her. She feels a prickle of delight when he pulls up her skirt and petticoats, and slips his hand between her legs. She cries out, reaching for him in turn. The armchair rasps against her thighs. She wants all of him. She wants to be as close as she can to him, to be a part of him – to give herself to exquisite disgrace.

  Butterfly

  32 Belgrave Square, London

  TWENTY-THIRD OF APRIL, 1851

  Dear Mr. Reed,

  I do hope you are in good health.

  I have attempted to correspond with you on several occasions and have also sent a footman to your residence. It would be appreciated if you could acknowledge receipt of this.

  We have not yet received the completed ‘Lepidoptera Window’, Item 297, Class XIX. The receiving date has passed, but we would be content to extend it until the 25th of this month. As I am sure you can appreciate, we have a great deal of curatorial work in compiling the works before our opening day on 1st May. If there is anything hindering the timely completion of the product, it is important that we are notified. We may be able to provide assistance in its assembly or transport.

  We have received Item 106, Class XXX (conjoined hound, articulated and stuffed).

  I urge you to write to me at your earliest availability.

  Yours,

  T. Filigree

  Secretary of London Local Committee, Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations Commission

  Bone

  Iris is lying on the floor of Silas’s cellar, and Silas reaches out to her. She edges her high-necked dress down and smiles at him, softly so that her teeth don’t show. There it is, just as he saw it on the day when they watched the Great Exhibition being built. A twist of skin over bone. She nods to say, Yes, you can touch it. He reaches out. He grasps her clavicle, and it comes loose like a butcher’s cut, and he holds it in his hand. She places her fingers on top of his.

  ‘Now you have escaped him,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replies. ‘If only I could see your work in the Crystal Palace, I think I should always be content. The finest of minds.’ She looks around her at a hammering sound.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he urges, but already he feels himself being pulled away from her, sees Iris begin to dissolve, and the bone in his hand vanishes. The knocking again – and she shimmers into nothing.

  Silas closes his eyes, luxuriating in the heat of the vision. It was so vivid that he was sure she was in front of him, that it was real. Her mention of the Great Exhibition gives him an idea; he will arrange a ticket for her.

  The knocking continues and a shouting follows, but he holds the pillow over his head, recalls the texture of bone.

  ‘Silas! I know you’re in there – open this door, you coward.’

  He recognizes the voice of Madame from the Dolphin, using the same tone as when she hurls vomiting sots out of the tavern at midnight.

  Silas frowns, closes his eyes and tries to imagine the continuation of the dream. Iris’s hand on his – that is where he was – and what will she do after? She leans
closer to him and says—

  ‘Open this blasted door, you bastard!’

  But Silas does not care.

  He has heard other customers ring and knock on his door, more than ever now that the season is almost upon them and the Great Exhibition crowds are starting to swell the city, but when he doesn’t answer, they eventually step back down the narrow alley with their noses pinched against the stink. The lapdog is rotting out there. He has lost interest in it.

  The house shakes with another kick of the door. Whatever can she want which provokes this violent a reaction? He won’t open the shop for her or for anyone. He has barely even thought of the rent for weeks. He smiles. Iris believes—

  ‘What did you do to her?’ Madame shouts. ‘I know you had something to do with it – you don’t fool me! Dead in a ditch the evening of your quarrel – a slip on the cobbles, my arse. You won’t be getting away with it neither. Bluebell was like a daughter to me.’

  And then with an animal cry, and a whack of her boot against the door, he hears her footsteps retreat down the passageway.

  Really, he has no idea what the woman is bleating about. She must be half-soused on gin. And if Bluebell has dropped it like Madame claims, well, she was a sour-tongued wench, and he feels nothing for her. He scratches his chest and climbs out of bed.

  He walks over to the wall with its shelf of mice, all frozen as if in fright. He thinks the tableau looks like a daguerreotype: he has stopped time, stilled each creature for ever. These beasts will not moulder and decay. They will endure.

  The mice were an early obsession of his. He dressed them up in little clothes and made or bought doll’s house props for them. There are about a dozen of them in various guises – a mill worker in skirts, a bonneted sweet vendor with a sugar cane that she holds like a staff, the prostitute in a silk dress – and they stand there gathering dust.