A Mad, Wicked Folly

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  “Papa has agreed?” I asked. “I thought he said a telephone in the home was an intrusion.”

  “She talked him round, and the thing was installed last week.”

  “Heavens.”

  I watched while Freddy saw Anne-Marie onto the next train and arranged for a cab for us, so capable and self-assured. He had not always been so. Our father used to remark on Freddy’s every movement, correcting him constantly. My brother was much older than I, ten years, but I remembered him spending most of his teenage years, while not at school, avoiding our father.

  We settled in the cab and the horse set off, harness jangling. The first signs of spring were about. Daffodils and narcissi poked their noses through the grass in Green Park. A weak ray of sunshine broke through the gloom, and several people sat on park benches, faces turned toward the warmth. Motorcars chugged past our cab, trailing smoke, tires hissing on the damp tarmacadam. The smell of wet wool, coal fires, and the tang of horse sweat got under my nose, but it was a welcome scent. London never failed to make me happy, so I tried not to dwell on my sadness at leaving France.

  “Well, how grim is it?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Fairly grim, Petal. I’m not going to lie to you.”

  “Is Papa very angry, then?”

  Freddy regarded me in silence for a moment. “Angry? Vicky, you took your clothes off in front of a group of men.”

  “You make it sound so sordid, Fred. It was an art class. It’s what we do.”

  But Freddy was shaking his head. “That makes no difference to our father. He doesn’t care a whit that it was in the name of art or what have you. Word has gotten round. Apparently some of the girls at Madame Édith’s wasted no time writing to their parents, and now Mother’s social circle knows.”

  “I care not what her social circle thinks.”

  “You should care. Your behavior did much damage, Petal. You know Dad has lost Sir Hugo Northbrook’s regard? That is a lot for him to swallow.”

  “What does Sir Hugo’s regard have to do with anything? Lily Northbrook is my dearest friend.”

  “Sir Hugo had been paving the way for Dad to gain a royal warrant. The royal residences are updating the plumbing, and he was going to introduce Dad to the procurer. If Dad supplies the fixtures, he’ll be on his way, but now, because of your actions, he may have lost his chance.”

  What Freddy said filled me with guilt. Royal warrants were marks of recognition for those who provided goods to King Edward. The By Appointment stamp was a highly coveted item; even more was the beautiful royal crest that decorated the receiver’s place of business. My father had made it his life’s work to gain one. Thomas Crapper & Company had installed thirty lavatories in the king’s country seat, Sandringham House, as well as fixtures in other royal houses years ago. Crapper was Papa’s bête noire, and the mere mention of the name sent him into a fury. To lose another royal contract to that company would be a terrible blow.

  Freddy looked at me in sympathy. “Not to worry. I’m sure Dad will find someone else who can help. He’s already working the chaps he knows at the Reform Club.”

  “Papa probably wants to roast me over an open fire now,” I said.

  “I think that would be the least of your punishments. He’s very angry. Roasting would be a merciful death, I should think.”

  “Do you have a whiff of anything?”

  Freddy shrugged. “No. I do know that another finishing school is out. No one would have you.”

  “It would be nice if someone asked me what I’d like to do. I’m not a child.”

  “Go on,” he prodded. “I know you’ve a scheme or two hatching in that mind of yours.”

  “I should like to go to college.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” he said. “Dad will never give his permission, even on a good day when all is right in his world. You know what he thinks about higher education for females.”

  “Yes, well, that’s where you come in. You’re going to help me convince him. Louisa Dowd goes to medical university. Times are changing.” Our neighbor’s daughter attended a medical school that admitted women.

  “You want to be a physician like Miss Dowd, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No! I would not want to have snotty children sneezing all over me and people complaining of piles and digestive difficulties. And Lord knows the places on a person she’ll have to look to make her diagnoses.” Freddy screwed his mouth up, trying not to smile. I could always make him laugh. “But I should like to go to art college.”

  “Why? You already know how to draw and such. Why do you need to go to college?”

  “I want to learn more, and I want to paint, and if I’m going to be able to exhibit my work, I need contacts in the art world who will help me along that path.”

  “Exhibit?” Freddy looked dubious.

  “Just leave it, Freddy. I want to go, and my reasons for going are my reasons. I’m not going to explain myself.” I was growing frustrated. What if Freddy refused to help me?

  “Fine, then—you’ll also need Dad’s coin. University is expensive.”

  “I’ll earn a scholarship.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I can earn money . . . somehow.”

  “Oh, give over, Vicky; how?”

  “Can you pay me to illustrate your novelettes?”

  “Oh, no. Not a chance. Penny dreadfuls aren’t the place for women’s pictures of bowls of fruit and bunches of flowers. We print drawings of highwaymen and demon barbers of Fleet Street. Not appropriate subjects for a girl.”

  I pinched him on the arm. “I don’t draw bowls of fruit! Nor do I draw bunches of flowers!”

  “Ow!” He rubbed his arm. “All right, then. You don’t draw fruit. You needn’t resort to violence to make your point.”

  “Just let me have a chance. Please, Fred.”

  “No. It’s utterly absurd.”

  “Why is it so absurd? I can illustrate as well as any man. These are modern times, and women are still treated as nothing but pretty dolls or lapdogs!”

  “Nevertheless, Dad would never forgive me if I allowed such a thing. I’ve just returned to his good graces, and what with Rose in her confinement, I simply can’t risk another row.”

  “What does Rose’s lying-in have to do with it? Papa cares not a fig about babies. I doubt he’ll even make the journey across town to see it when it’s born. Much too taxing for him, I’d say. And then when it starts yelling and squalling, as babies are wont to do, he’ll be first out the door.”

  “It?” Freddy tilted his head toward me.

  “Very well. Her! Charlotte would love a little sister.”

  “Him, I’d prefer.”

  I opened my mouth in retort.

  He held up his finger. “A sister needs a brother’s guidance to rub along in life.”

  I shot him a filthy look. He laughed.

  “I feel very sorry for your future husband, my dear. I can picture him now, living his life so innocently, unknowing of the mischief his future wife will create for him.”

  “Ha-ha. Very amusing, Freddy.”

  “But the point is, Vick, that Dad will be happy to cut my allowance again if I should stray. No. Sorry, I cannot risk it.”

  “But you make your own money!”

  “A publisher of a start-up tuppenny novelette company makes very little. Certainly not enough to feed a family and keep home and hearth together.” Freddy grew quiet. His face was pinched with strain. Suddenly I understood what it had cost him to break from our father’s expectations. I took his hand. “It maddens me to admit it,” he said. “But I need the old man’s money, too. I suppose I’m just as much of a lapdog as you, Petal, when it comes right down to it.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll mention this art-college idea of yours to Moth
er, but that’s it. The rest is up to you.”

  “Thank you, Freddy!” I kissed his cheek. “I’ll never ask anything of you again.”

  “I highly doubt that, Petal,” Freddy said.

  Big Ben rang out three o’clock as the cab reached Parliament. I was surprised to see a crowd of women in front of the gates near the House of Commons. London was a city of men, and women did not loiter. They traveled through on their way home or to the shops. Women who stood about were considered of ill reputation. But these women didn’t seem to be concerned with their reputation, ill or otherwise.

  The cab stopped for traffic, and I leaned toward the window. What was most unusual was that the women were of various classes, from upper-class to working-

  class. I could tell by the way they were dressed. A woman handing out leaflets wore an expensive-looking fox stole around her neck; her wide-brimmed hat was trimmed in feathers. A woman in less fashionable dress, probably middle-class, stood talking to her. She was tiny and as thin as a rake. She wore a plain navy suit, called a tailor-made, with a gray bow tie. There were several working-class women too, who looked as though they had just left the factory floor, feet in clogs and shawls around their shoulders. I had never seen a collection of mismatched women so united. My mother, and every woman in her social circle, would have fainted dead away if forced to mingle with such a mixed group.

  The men on the street seemed as curious, gawking at the assembly as they walked by. I noticed several posters hanging on the iron railings, bracketing the women. On one was a stylized drawing of Joan of Arc. She held a trailing green banner with the word

  JUSTICE

  blazoned on it. Étienne could not have drawn a better poster.

  Just as I was thinking this, a police constable ripped it down and tore it in half. A younger constable stepped forward to deal with the second poster, but he didn’t rip it. Instead, he removed it carefully from the railings, rolled it up, and handed it to the tiny woman.

  Who were they?

  “Votes for women!” the woman with the fur muff called out, solving the mystery for me. She turned to thrust a leaflet at a passing man, and I saw that she wore a sash across her jacket with the letters WSPU.

  I knew that WSPU stood for Women’s Social and Political Union. It was headed by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel, who was so famous she had her own waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s and her face on playing cards. All the girls at my finishing school were agog over Christabel’s beauty and her sense of style. Certainly not over her political views. Not at Madame Édith’s Finishing School for Girls.

  “Suffragettes!” I said. “In the flesh!”

  Freddy leaned across me and snapped the window shade down.

  I flung the shade back up just in time to see the man snatch the leaflet from the woman’s hand, pitch it to the ground, and stamp it under his heel. Undaunted, she shoved another at the next passerby. “Votes for women!”

  The traffic snarl cleared and the cab moved forward. I turned to Freddy. “What are they doing in front of Parliament?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “Oh, come off it, Freddy!”

  Freddy sighed. “They picket Parliament every day demanding the vote, leafleting, fixing their ruddy propaganda to the railings, and mucking things up. Christabel Pankhurst and her cursed mother have led their merry band of suffragettes into all sorts of shenanigans, as of late.” He grimaced. “They do it for attention, to grab newspaper headlines. But not for much longer. You see the chaos they cause—traffic and all sorts. The prime minister is going to put a stop to that nonsense soon enough.”

  I pressed my cheek against the window of the cab, eyes straining to keep the spectacle in sight for as long as I could. The cab turned a corner, and the suffragettes vanished from view. I sat back. “They meet there every day?”

  Freddy looked alarmed, sensing looming disaster. “Don’t tell me you’re going to join them.”

  My fingers began to itch as they always did when I saw something that I wanted to draw. “I have no plans to join them. But I’d love to draw them.”

  My brother muttered something under his breath. I couldn’t hear what he said exactly, but it was something along the lines of here we go again.

  Four

  Berkeley Square,

  Darling residence, number 2

  FREDDY ESCORTED ME home, and I begged him to come inside so as to dilute some of Mamma’s anger toward me.

  Freddy stayed for tea. Our mother was too civilized to chastise me in front of him, but she eyed me above her teacup, pinky crooked somewhat accusingly in my direction.

  Finally, Freddy made his good-byes. I sat nervously while Mother saw him to the door. Freddy leaned in to kiss her cheek and then paused. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but from the look upon her face she didn’t like it. She closed the door behind Freddy and walked back into the sitting room.

  “Do you want to explain yourself?” she asked in an even tone that I recognized as controlled anger.

  “I—”

  “I know not what to do with you, Victoria! Undressing in front of men?”

  “It was for art, Mamma,” I said, trying to keep the defiance out of my voice. That would only lead me into more trouble.

  My mother had an artistic bent herself, but she turned her talents to the decorative, drawing her own patterns for needlework, painting the odd watercolor landscape for the hallway. She could never understand what it took to become a real artist.

  She played with the pearls at her throat. “Such reckless behavior will lead you down the path to ruin. And now, your brother has just told me that you wish to go to art college. I’ll tell you that your father will not allow you to attend.”

  I said nothing. What could I say? My opinions, thoughts, and desires meant little in my own home and always had. Freddy was right. I should have known better.

  “You’ve disappointed us, Victoria.” She crossed to the credenza to look through a pile of fabric swatches that lay there. She picked up her embroidery hoop and sank into the chair.

  “I’m sorry, Mamma. I really am. But . . . please don’t punish me so harshly. I really want to go to art school. How about this? At least let me apply. If I get in, then—”

  “Denying you art school is not a punishment, Victoria! It’s for your own good. What kind of mother would set her child up for failure?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” I could hold back no longer.

  My mother smacked her hoop down on the seat so hard the bamboo cane snapped. “What you did, Victoria, was beyond the pale. You’re very lucky that you didn’t do this after you came out. The scandal would have been irreparable, and your father and I would have been unable to save you. You would have been lost.”

  Her blast of anger caught me so unawares that I shrank back. My mother had never raised her voice to me in that way. Never.

  “You’ll not walk out of the door until your father and I have decided what to do with you. I have nothing more to say. Go upstairs.” She picked up her hoop and tutted at the damage. “See what you’ve gone and made me do.”

  As if I had the power to make my mother do anything. If I did, I certainly would do more than make her break a bamboo embroidery hoop.

  THAT FIRST NIGHT my father greeted me with a cold

  hello when I kissed his cheek. And then one week slid into the next, and still no one said much. Dinners were silent affairs, only broken by the occasional “please pass the salt” or the clink of cutlery. I began to hope that this confinement and the cold shoulder-of-mutton treatment would be the extent of my punishment. Once it ran its course, I would bring up the idea of art school again. I could bide my time.

  I had been home for a fortnight when my mother called me into her drawing room. She sat working on her needlepoint in the window seat, squinting in the morning light.

 
“You wished to see me, Mamma?”

  Mamma stuck her needle into the muslin and put her hoop aside. “Sit down, Victoria.” Her tone was the one she used when she refused to brook any nonsense, so I knew what she had to say would not lead to happy days for me.

  I sat. I felt as though I were climbing the stairs to the scaffold where the executioner waited to slice off my head. I could only hope it would be swift and not too painful.

  “Now, your father and I have been discussing your prospects. Finishing school is no longer an option, so we must accept that.”

  I shifted. “Yes, Mamma.” Well, that was a relief. I could see the executioner set down his ax.

  “It’s high time you lowered your skirts and put your hair up. You look a child with your hair dangling down like that. I have hired a lady’s maid for you—Sophie Cumberbunch is her name. She will arrive this Saturday. Very highly recommended. Skills at the height of style, both clothing and hair. Mrs. Hollingberry employed this Cumberbunch for her daughter Joan—such a plain little thing—but Cumberbunch was able to work miracles.”

  “If she is so amazing, why doesn’t Joan keep her?”

  “Joan has married down and no longer has the means for a lady’s maid.” Mamma looked utterly scandalized. I’m sure she couldn’t imagine a life where a woman was forced to button her own shoes, comb her own hair, draw her own bath. Oh the horror, the shame of it! It wasn’t that difficult. I dressed myself and did my own hair. True, Mamma’s dressing ritual did require assistance, but it wasn’t a crime to simplify one’s dress, I was sure. “Still, her loss is our gain. She will prepare your clothing for your coming-out and act as your chaperone.”

  “Mamma,” I interrupted. “Do you think it’s wise that I have a coming-out? After all that has happened, do you think I’ll get one single invitation to a ball?”

  My mother was outraged. “No one in my circle would dare shun me by cutting your name from the guest list!”