Victorian Secrets

by Sarah A. Chrisman

  My helper and I looked at each other, at my half-naked form, and at the fragile antique clothing carefully arranged over every available surface in the makeshift dressing room. Is she kidding?

  I poked my head out the door. A dumpy old woman glared at me, with much the same expression I imagined she had turned on the Grim Reaper several decades previously, before saying that she was too old to have truck with him and slamming the door in his face.

  “Let me in!” she insisted crossly. Then she looked at all the clothing carefully arranged in sequence for our presentation. “You have to move all this stuff!” she snapped. “Hurry up!”

  “There’s another bathroom across the hall.” I pointed to the door labeled WOMEN, not three feet behind and three to the right of her. She had walked past it.

  She looked at my indicating hand and scowled at me. “I can’t use that one! You have to move all this stuff! Hurry up!”

  I gave my young helper an incredulous look. Is this dame for real? I glanced down the hall to check that there was no one to see me running around in bare feet and underwear, then darted across the hall, glancing into the ladies’ room. It was more than three times larger than our makeshift dressing room and it was totally empty.

  “There’s no one in here,” I told Grandma Biddy, holding the door open for her. “There are three stalls you could use! We’ll help you in!” The last statement was offered in desperation. The clock was ticking, and this was taking far, far too long.

  “I can’t use that one!” the crone repeated, pushing past the meek young helper. “Move all this stuff! Move it! Move it!”

  Oh, for land’s sake! My own grandmother’s version of profanity came back to me. If I’d had the presence of mind to step back and view a very illogical situation from a logical viewpoint, I simply should have refused: told the woman this room was unavailable and gone onstage. However, she gave every indication of an intent to urinate all over my precious antiques if they were not moved at her command. And even stronger than this implied threat was the force of training drilled into me from childhood: that old people must be obeyed, no matter how ludicrous their instructions.

  Ticktock, ticktock!

  I was keenly aware of the havoc this interruption was creating with my timing as the helper and I hurried to shift a path to the spare toilet while the crone hissed at us. When I finally threw on my tea gown in the hall and darted back out to the presentation area, I was so flustered that my carefully prepared words flew away like notes blown off a podium by a gale. The audience looked at me expectantly and I groped through my mind, trying to gather the mental cards of my dropped speech.

  “This is a tea gown,” I told them, desperately trying to remember all the information I’d practiced and had perfectly queued up in my mind before the lavatory incident. “It’s made of cotton flannel, and a woman would have worn it for entertaining at home . . .”

  When I ran dry of information, I trailed off into ancillary branches from my main trail of thought.

  “And as long as we’re talking about entertaining . . .”

  I picked up my calling card case from the display we’d arranged at the front of the room. Going through those customs bought me a few more minutes. Gabriel still hadn’t appeared.

  “And you’ll notice the silhouette of this dress, so this seems like a good time to bring up the corset . . .”

  This was really stretching, but at least it was a topic about which I could keep up speech for a while. Still no Gabriel.

  When my husband finally arrived, I inhaled a discreet breath of relief. He would later explain that while I’d been grasping at straws up on stage first to recall and then to immensely prolong my speech, he’d been waiting on the old crone’s interminable biological business before he could gain access to his next change of clothes, now horribly jumbled after the hasty rearranging.

  After the massacre that had been made of our timing, I half-expected to be booed by the end of the presentation. Contrary to my expectations, we were applauded brightly. Later, Mary Lee would politely point out that we had run over our allotted time, but the audience had loved it.

  Women swarmed up around us following the question-and-answer session. A pretty, young brunette told me, “I didn’t know a modern woman could look like you!” The sentiment was taken up and repeated by several in the crowd.

  Why couldn’t a modern woman look like me?

  “Well,” I explained, “it takes a lot more than a hundred years to really evolve different body shapes. We can do everything they did.”

  There was something sadly wistful in it: to see these twenty-first-century “emancipated” women yearning after a freedom over their bodies, which their great-grandmothers had possessed, but which modern society had convinced them they could never have. It felt like a liberating rebellion to explain that they could.

  They asked a number of questions about corsets and my experiences with them. Many suggested that I should write a book about it all. My mind turned upon this, and I hesitated. I had written adult novels and a children’s picture book, dabbled in poetry, and won minor awards for my short stories, but . . . a memoir? About me? I’m boring!

  I looked around at the bright-faced women smiling at me. I blushed.

  “Oh . . . I don’t know about that. Who would read it?”

  A chorus of laughter met my befuddled expression as eyes turned pointedly to my linen-lace dress, my twenty-two-inch waist. They glanced amongst themselves and the answer chimed out the same from all sides: “I would!”

  An 1889 fashion plate.

  27

  Loose Laces to Tie Up the Tale

  Sears, Roebuck & Co. Catalogue illustration.

  When I was a child, there was a special popularity for “found object” scenarios in children’s stories. The specific details were subject to variety, but the general plot was always the same: an ordinary (or more often, less than ordinary) person finds some magical object and by using it can transform into a superhero. In the early days, the corset felt a bit like that. Not only did the lines of steel and protective cloth feel physically like putting on armor, but it transformed my body, posture, and stance just as much as any superhero costume. Clark Kent just took off his glasses to become Superman; I had something that metamorphosed my entire body. Within those magical silken curves, I faced the world with a different attitude. The world in its turn saw this and changed its own stance regarding me.

  Like those beloved childhood superheroes, in the early days I often felt I was leading a double life. Before it became a constant I never removed, I wondered what people who had never seen me in my corset would do if they suddenly encountered this other aspect of myself. (What would Diana Prince’s friends think if they met her at the grocery store in her Wonder Woman tights?) Yet, when I did see it, I found that their reactions did neither more nor less than reflect the inner nature of their characters, confirm values already established. The suspicious and the antagonistic remained as they always had: suspicious and antagonistic of this piece, as they were of all things. My friends remained my friends, appreciating me for all the things they had always appreciated in me. The constants in this human experiment had remained consistent: it was me who was the variable.

  When I opened my twenty-ninth birthday present and saw what the wrapping contained, it never occurred to me that this object of silk and steel would open up opportunities. The idea of a life where photographers stopped me on the street to ask me to model for them was even farther removed from my reality than Seattle is from Ishikawa. (As I mentioned earlier, in Japan, a stranger had—once—stopped to take my picture, but at the time I was the only blonde in a city of about fifty thousand people, and I was holding a fifteen-pound turnip.) But it does happen.

  I was strolling alone through a springtime street fair a little more than a year after all this had started when a hand gently tapped me on the shoulder from behind. “Excuse me—”

  I turned around. A dark-haired man approximately m
y own age smiled at me.

  “I was wondering . . .” He looked down, then back up, and smiled quickly. I thought he was going to ask about the corset, so his next words surprised me. “I do fashion photography, and I wondered if you’d let me take your picture?”

  I smiled, shocked but flattered. “Of course!”

  He grinned, then looked left and right. There were thick crowds all around—less-than-ideal photography situations. “Are you on your way somewhere?”

  “I’m just sort of walking,” I explained.

  “I’ll walk with you!”

  We went up and down the street a bit, then he recalled a nearby building with a scenic courtyard, just off the avenue. Moving away from the main street, I had misgivings. I noticed that he didn’t seem to be carrying a camera and I started to worry. Don’t go inside with him! a voice said in the back of my mind. You don’t know this guy!

  I felt palpable relief when he indicated a large rhododendron. “In front of here’s good. That way we can get some flowers in the shot.” He frowned slightly at them. “Too bad they’re not lower down.” He shrugged, unslung his backpack, and pulled out a large, expensive-looking camera. When I saw the heavy, professional lens, I felt distinctly silly for my earlier paranoia. “Have you done modeling before?”

  “No, uh-uh.” I smiled, relaxed now.

  He looked surprised and snapped off a few pictures. “Turn a little more this way . . . Good!” Snap, snap! “Wow, you’ve got a great smile, too!”

  I’ve been told before that people like my smile, but it’s the compliment I have the most trouble believing. My teeth are a bit crooked, despite years of orthodontics, and I’m self-conscious about them. It made me grin in earnest to have my smile complimented by a professional photographer.

  “Good! Now, look over your shoulder . . . Turn a bit—great!” Snap, snap! “Can you put your arms out a bit?”

  I struck a pseudo-ballet pose and he frowned. I switched tactics, planting my hands on my hips. This met with approval.

  “Perfect!” Snap, snap! “You can relax—I don’t want to hurt your neck.” (I was still looking over my shoulder.)

  “No, I’m fine!” I assured him. Compared to the contortions I used to get into in the judo club, this position was about as stressful as having a butterfly land on my hair.

  “Really? Okay, then let’s do a few more!” He shifted angles. I rolled my shoulders back into maximum Victorian posture.

  “Wow, you’ve got great arms, too!” Snap, snap!

  I couldn’t quite mimic the astonishingly narrow shoulders of someone like Alice Roosevelt Sr., who’d been practicing since childhood, but after a year of rhomboid work, my shoulders were capable of significantly more retraction than my average contemporary. I was really quite enjoying this.

  A few days later, I met with another photographer. He had run up to me the week before as I passed through the university bookstore, a candid grin on his face.

  “Miss! Miss!”

  I stopped when I realized I was the one being called, and a young man with artsy glasses and curly brown hair caught up to me.

  “Hi! I was just wondering, are you dressed up for something?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I look like this every day.”

  “Wow!” His grin got broader. “That’s fantastic!” He put his hand on his chest. “I’m a photography major, and I was wondering if you’d let me take your picture sometime?”

  I smiled. “Sure!”

  I reached for my purse, and he reached for his bag.

  “Let me write down my contact info for you—”

  “Okay, I’ll give you one of my cards.” I pulled out my mother-of-pearl ­calling card case.

  “Ooh, that’s even better!” He closed his bag and flashed an apologetically sheepish grin. “I don’t have any cards. I’m Max, by the way.”

  “Sarah.” I shook his hand.

  Contact thus established, we went on our separate ways, and later in the day I received an email from him that must have been sent within minutes of the meeting. A bit of back-and-forth electronic communication decided that the best location for the shoot would be the University of Washington’s Suzzallo Library.

  I adore Suzzallo; it was my favorite retreat when I was a UW student. Built at the turn of the twentieth century as a “cathedral of learning,” it rests like a crowning gem atop a hill from which two separate mountain ranges are visible: the majestic Cascades and the rocky Olympics. Soaring Gothic architecture frames jewellike stained glass, guarded not by the saints imprisoned in stone upon religious cathedrals, but by effigies of history’s great thinkers, from Socrates to Darwin. This architectural choice is actually a wonderful illustration of the changing values of the time: the United States was shifting from a religious culture to an increasingly secular one, where philosophers and scientists were revered over prophets.

  It was raining on the day of the shoot, and I deliberately planned my arrival at the library to be punctual instead of early so that I wouldn’t have to stand in the wet. I felt a pang of guilt when I saw Max waiting in the drizzle.

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” I said, folding up my umbrella.

  “No,” he replied. “Actually I just got here. Thanks for doing this today!”

  “No problem!”

  We started at the Grand Staircase inside the entrance. I sat on the beautiful marble steps, my skirt tilted up in some of the shots to flash the bright silk petticoats underneath, spread upon depressions worn into the stone by millions of footsteps.

  After the staircase, we moved up to the graduate Reading Room, a chamber so photogenic that movie scenes have been shot inside.55 We tried our best to be quiet as I posed in front of dark wooden paneling, carved with wildflowers and native fruits. I had brought the art-case editions of my own books, and for some shots I sat reading them, lit by morning light through stained glass windows.

  The graduate Reading Room has all the beauty and grandeur of the interior of a cathedral—and the quietude of one. We shot as many pictures as we dared before Max whispered to me, “I think we’re really going to start annoying people if we stay here much longer.”

  I nodded silent agreement, and we moved on to a side staircase that reminded me of walls I’d seen in European castles, thence to the map room.

  Finally, we concluded on the bridge between two libraries (the second-story overpass that connects Suzzallo to the Allen Library). My handmade books were featured in more shots before Max did a close-up on my watch.

  Afterward, he offered to buy me coffee as a thankful gesture for the modeling. This being Seattle, there was a café actually in the library, on the ground floor in a room that was formerly part of the computer lab. Max had to go shoot some stills of aged wood while the carpentry shop was open, so he left after he’d bought me my coffee. I settled down alone to drink my white chocolate mocha in quiet meditation. As I was finishing the last sips, a heavyset young man sat down across from me.

  I was about to leave when the newcomer stopped me.

  “Excuse me,” he began, somewhat apologetically. “I was wondering, are you dressed up for anything in particular?”

  It was a typical question, and I gave it my typical answer, shaking my head. “Uh-uh. I look like this every day.”

  He smiled. “That’s cool! What got you started?”

  “Well . . .” I briefly wondered where to begin. “I was the little girl who, when my mom took me to a Victorian museum, begged her to leave me there.”

  I clasped my hands and made little-girl puppy-dog eyes. “Please!” I mimicked my younger self. This was an anecdote I’d told before, and it was always good for a laugh.

  “Then, one day,” I went on, “I just sort of decided that I didn’t care what everyone else was wearing, or what other people thought. I was just going to wear what I wanted to wear.”

  “That’s wonderful!” The man across from me smiled approvingly.

  I tilted my empty coffee cup, watch
ing ecru drops twirl in the bottom.

  “I also like introducing a bit of temporal diversity into life. I mean, people talk a lot about diversity, but . . .”

  I hesitated. I knew what I wanted to say, but it took some effort to express the sentiment that had settled so deeply within me. I thought of the mass-produced banners and bumper stickers proclaiming DIVERSITY, proudly displayed by women who described themselves as liberal, yet criticized my clothing.

  “I think a lot of the time people get stuck on one set idea and forget about actual diversity.” I shrugged. “I know that sounds strange.”

  (Gabriel liked to describe the popular, politically correct variety of this as “brand-name diversity”: the philosophy that, aside from the acceptable variations in race, religion, or sexual orientation, everyone should otherwise live their life as an exact, assembly-line copy of every other person’s life in their community—and by God, they’d better! For a contrasting term, he deemed what I was doing “off-brand diversity.”)

  The man in the coffee shop shook his head. “No, not at all. I totally agree!”

  “The other thing,” I confessed, taking a lighter tone. “Modern clothes look terrible on me.”

  “Really?” He laughed.

  I joined in the chuckling. “Yeah, I just don’t fit the modern ideal,” I explained, closing one eye and drawing a straight line in the air with thumb and forefinger. “I’m not built like a twelve-year-old boy!” I rested my hands on the table, and glanced down at my curves. “But, that wasn’t always the ideal. So, I decided there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t wear clothes based on ones from a time when the ideal was closer to how I actually look.”

  “Well,” he responded, nodding. “All fashion’s cyclical anyways, so why not?”

  One of the most amusing ideas I encounter—and one of those I understand the least—is the utter certainty of some people that I must be living the life I do because I am paid for it. This is quite a peculiar thought to me: that a human being of independent mind, endowed by their creator with freedom of thought, should choose a lifestyle with slight differences from that of the rest of their herd only because they are being paid to do so. The first time it confronted me, I was taken aback.