The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose

by Mary Hooper

  Another week went by and the weather grew hotter. The fat man didn’t return, and Ma Gwyn refused to say what they’d been talking about, but other odd things happened. A woman appeared at the house, a seamstress, and Eliza was measured up for – well, for what she didn’t know. A gown, or a suit, or a waistcoat? Ma wasn’t saying. All she would say was that Eliza would know soon enough and it was going to be a most excellent garment.

  Eliza didn’t know whether she should fret. A new gown, a brand-new gown especially for her, was an undreamed-of treat. But for what occasion was it needed? Not for a wedding, surely?

  Susan didn’t know either. ‘Maybe ’tis something for the Midsummer Fair?’ she suggested. ‘I’m having a new dress for that, too – but mine will be a newly ragged one so that I may earn lots from my begging!’

  ‘What happens at the Midsummer Fair?’ Eliza asked her.

  Susan’s face grew rapt with excitement. ‘Oh, there’s a mighty crush of people all intent on entertainment. There’s a man tightrope walking – and another eats fire! There are pageants and waxworks and clever animals who do tricks. And there are the curiosities: last year there was a woman with three arms and another with two heads!’

  ‘There couldn’t possibly be!’ Eliza said, thinking how sad it was that the little girl was so disfigured that she’d never find a husband.

  ‘’Twas true!’ Susan assured her. ‘And there was a man covered all over in hair like a wolf – but you had to pay sixpence to see him and my ma wouldn’t – and a great many peddlers and stalls and things to buy: fairings and sweetmeats and ribbons and gloves. There’s a hiring fair where people go to seek positions, and apothecaries and travelling doctors. There’s a mint of money to be made from begging at the fair!’

  ‘Does everyone go?’ Eliza asked, wondering if she’d be allowed there.

  ‘Everyone,’ Susan assured her. ‘’Tis on for three days and all the great ladies and gentlemen go, and their servants – why, ’tis even said that last year the king and queen went!’

  Eliza looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘The king and queen …’ she gasped. To her the words meant some remote, divine, God-like creatures. She’d never thought of them as being living and breathing people who could actually attend fairs.

  ‘But they always come in disguise,’ Susan went on earnestly. ‘They sometimes dress as coachmen and milkmaids and mix in with the crowd to hear what everyone’s saying about them.’ She dropped her voice, ‘So when you’re at the Midsummer Fair you must never, never say anything treasonous against the king, just in case he’s nearby.’

  ‘I would never!’ Eliza promised, for she’d been brought up as a Royalist and respected the Crown, and couldn’t understand how anyone would turn against the real and anointed king. Feeling some of Susan’s excitement about the Midsummer Fair, she hoped desperately that Ma Gwyn would let her out of the house for such an occasion. And maybe, too, there was a chance that her father might be there for the hiring fair.

  The seamstress making the outfit for Eliza came back to Coal Yard Alley with some materials to show to Ma Gwyn, the like of which Eliza, used to country tweeds, rough calico and cheesecloth, had never before seen. There were bolts of deep green brocade, shiny blue taffeta, emerald-green tulle, silver tissue and sumptuous silk that shimmered in the sunlight. Some of these were embellished with sparkling beads of sea-blue, tiny spangles of silver or buttons of pearl.

  The seamstress flung different lengths of material over Eliza in turn, then she and Ma stood back to look at the results and chose which should be used.

  ‘These are the best and finest materials in the land,’ said the seamstress. ‘And I think you’ll agree they’ll suit your purpose.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Ma. ‘Our Eliza is going to be the talk of London town.’

  ‘But why?’ Eliza asked, excited in spite of the frisson of fear which ran through her. ‘And what exactly is it I’m to have made?’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ Ma said.

  ‘Will I be wearing it to the Midsummer Fair?’

  Ma’s mouth gaped with astonishment and her pipe fell out. ‘There’s a cunning girl!’ she said. ‘You have worked out the very thing.’ And she and the seamstress exchanged smiles and conspiratorial glances.

  ‘Am I really to go there?’ Eliza asked, suddenly very excited.

  ‘You are,’ Ma nodded.

  ‘But what about all the people that will see me? Don’t you care about that now?’ Eliza asked, wondering at this sudden change in her benefactor’s conduct.

  Ma and the seamstress snorted with laughter.

  ‘What is it?’ Eliza asked, frowning.

  ‘Well, it’s like this, my sweeting,’ Ma said. ‘You’ll be in disguise, you see. So you needn’t worry about being seen.’

  ‘Disguise?’

  ‘Like a masquerade,’ Ma explained. ‘All the quality masquerade now.’

  And although Eliza asked several times what she’d actually be called upon to do, Ma wouldn’t say.

  Eliza was instructed to wash her hair every other day with rosemary and thyme to scent it and make it shiny, and Susan was given the job of brushing it a hundred times a day. Sometimes when people came to the house Ma would ask Eliza to let her hair down and show it – and when she did so they’d nod sagely and say it would do very well indeed.

  Eliza was pleased that they all found favour with her hair, of course, but knew there must be more to it than that. There was something else … something else going on that she didn’t understand.

  On Midsummer Day Ma Gwyn came into Eliza’s room very early, as soon as the sun was up. Eliza, yawning, protested that she wanted to go back to sleep, but then remembered what day it was.

  ‘Are we to go out and collect greenery and branches to decorate the house?’ she asked, for this had been the custom in Somersetshire.

  ‘God help us – there’s no time for such foolery this morning,’ Ma said, pulling off the sacking from the window.

  ‘Then why are we up so early?’

  ‘To ready ourselves for the Midsummer Fair, of course!’

  Eliza, sitting up now, saw that Ma had an outfit of some sort over her arm, a swathe of greeny-blue.

  ‘You’re to come downstairs and I’m to help you get into your new gown ready for the Fair,’ Ma said. ‘Now, what d’you think to that?’

  Eliza looked at her nervously. ‘But will you tell me now what I’ll be doing there?’

  ‘Just looking yer luvverly best, my kitling.’

  Eliza hesitated. ‘I’m not … you’re not giving me to that fat man, are you?’

  Ma gave a guffaw of laughter. ‘Indeed not. When your time comes, ’twill be to a far wealthier man than he!’

  Eliza did not find this very comforting. Rising, however, she went downstairs, splashed her face with water, and then turned to Ma.

  ‘And now am I to put on my new dress?’

  Ma nodded, shaking out the material she’d been holding and displaying it before her. Looking at it, Eliza gasped, for it was a most unusual and sumptuous blue-green taffeta which shone and shimmered in the light from the window. The dress – or whatever it was – appeared to be very small, though, and hardly long enough to cover her. It was the most beautiful – yet also the very strangest – gown she’d ever seen in her life …

  Chapter Eight

  An hour later, Eliza was at the Midsummer Fair. She wasn’t walking around enjoying the sideshows and curiosities, however, but was inside a large, square, canvas tent. A notice above the entrance to the tent read:

  See within a representation of the sea in motion with a Genuine

  Mermaid plucked from Neptune’s Depths. Not to be

  confused with a waxwork. This is a Genuine Creature and

  may be viewed for a Limited Period Only.

  Inside the tent, the mermaid wept.

  ‘You’ve got to sing!’ Ma Gwyn said to a weeping Eliza. ‘For sixpence the people expects singing. They expects the mermaid’s sir
en song what lures the sailors on to the rocks.’

  Eliza buried her face in her hands. ‘I cannot! I cannot sit here, naked, and sing …’

  Ma snorted. ‘Oh, do not take on so,’ she said, exasperated. ‘’Tis only for three days.’

  ‘Oh, for shame!’ Eliza cried.

  ‘No, for money,’ said Ma, and she cackled with laughter. ‘We shall all make a mint by this.’

  Within the tent, an ingenious pool had been built. Constructed of wood and canvas, it was covered with undergrowth, greenery and slate, so that the general effect was one of a large rockpool on a wild seaside shore. The ‘motion’ advertised was caused by Susan, crouched out of sight, pulling on a piece of rope which drew a blade through the water, causing ripples and eddies to appear on its surface.

  Eliza was sitting on a rock with her feet in the pool of water, through which glided some small ornamental fish. From the waist downwards her body was encased in shimmering blue-green material which had been painstakingly covered in tiny oxidised metal spangles sewn in an overlapping fashion like fish scales, finishing in a spectacular silvery-blue tail. Her bosom was naked apart from a narrow length of material tied around and only partially concealing it; her tumbling black locks were intended to hide the rest.

  Outside the tent which enclosed Eliza and the pool, the fat man stood on a box and shouted to be heard above the crowds.

  ‘Come and see the gen-u-ine mermaid in all her glory!’ Eliza heard him call. ‘Her like has not been seen at any Fair in this country before! A sixpence to view this fantastical creature! Roll up! Roll up!’

  Eliza wept on. ‘My family would be shamed – they would disown me,’ she protested, forgetting for the moment that such an unfortunate fate already seemed to have befallen her.

  Ma coughed and spat. ‘For a lass who was running with lice in Clink prison a while back you’re talking mighty dainty! Would you rather be there amid the filth and the fleas than here at Midsummer Fair, sitting on a rock as pretty as a picture?’

  Eliza didn’t know what to answer to this.

  ‘Just you say the word, my little Miss Hoity Toity, an’ I’ll take you back there straight and find another girl. Why, most poor jades would give their maidenheads to be dressed up so fine.’

  Eliza rubbed at her wet cheeks. ‘So you wish me to sit here, near-naked, while all the world comes and stares?’

  ‘Of course yer must be naked!’ Ma Gwyn said. ‘Mermaids do not sit on rocks in their gowns and flannel petticoats. And you ’ave yer ’air and a ribband to ’ide your privities.’

  ‘I shan’t stay!’ Eliza looked wildly around the tent. ‘I shall run off.’

  ‘You can try,’ Ma said reasonably. ‘But ’ow will you run with no legs and your fish’s tail a-flapping?’

  ‘I shall get out of this costume!’

  ‘If you do, we shall all ’ave the pleasure of seeing your bare arse a-running across the field. I shall charge double for a view of that!’

  As Eliza burst into fresh tears, Ma leaned towards her conspiratorially. ‘Better to stay, lass, and pay off some of your debts.’

  Eliza looked up. ‘What debts?’

  ‘Why, what you owes me. There’s the cost of gettin’ you out of Clink, plus your board and keep for three weeks – that’s a tidy packet I’m due. All you’ve to do now is sit ’ere as nice as a nosegay for three days, and you’ll ’ave gone some ways towards paying me back.’

  Eliza fell silent. Had she really thought that a person such as Ma Gwyn would have rescued her out of the goodness of her heart? In Somersetshire, maybe, that might happen. But not in London. She gave a long, resigned sigh.

  ‘So, my sweeting – about yer singing,’ Ma said, sensing victory. ‘Just a plainsong or a nice ballad would suffice. Or even just a tra-la-la such as a mermaid might sing to get ’erself a sailor boy.’

  Eliza said nothing.

  ‘Nothing too modern, mind,’ Ma went on. ‘Some o’ the old stuffs.’

  Defeated, Eliza gave a slight nod. She would do it, she would have to do it. Sighing again, she looked down at her bosom and adjusted the ribband as well as she could, then threaded her fingers through her hair and spread it over her shoulders to try and hide herself even more.

  Ma Gwyn smiled so that the wrinkles on her face, engrained with coal dust, went into a spider’s web of lines. ‘Get that pool movin’, Susan,’ she called over. ‘The customers are waitin’.’

  Obligingly, the pool began rippling. As it lapped gently up the side of the rock on which she was seated, Eliza moved her tethered legs and made her tail flick across the surface of the water and back again, twisting slightly like the live fish she’d seen on market stalls. If she was going to be a mermaid, she decided, she may as well try and be a convincing one.

  As Ma Gwyn went outside ready to take money from the customers, Susan’s face appeared above the foliage to stare at Eliza.

  ‘Are you a real mermaid now?’ she asked wonderingly.

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ Eliza said, flicking her tail again. ‘I’m Eliza! You’ve been sharing a bed with me these past nights. And you saw me being dressed in my tail just a bit earlier.’

  ‘But you look so like … just the same as the mermaid in the window of St Mary’s Church,’ Susan said wonderingly.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Eliza said, ‘for the seamstress must have copied that very one.’

  From outside they suddenly heard the words, ‘If you please, my lords, ladies and gentlemen – the genuine mermaid awaits!’ and Susan ducked down again behind the rock.

  Eliza’s stomach knotted with fright as the tent flap was drawn open and Ma Gwyn was silhouetted in the doorway. Behind her could be seen perhaps forty people, jostling each other, pushing, nudging and peering over shoulders, each anxious to be first to see the wondrous sight.

  ‘Mind your manners,’ Ma exhorted, spitting on the floor. ‘Step up nicely to see the genuine mermaid! And gentlemen, for a few extra coins thrown into ’er pool, the mermaid will be obliged to sing for you.’

  Eliza lowered her head modestly. Not for anything was she going to look up and see those who were staring at her with such intent. This wasn’t really her … she wasn’t truly there …

  ‘The Genuine Mermaid’ was the hit of the Fair, that much was certain. From eight in the morning until eight at night a procession of people paid their sixpences, queued outside the tent for up to an hour and entered in groups of twenty or so to stare at Eliza. Grand ladies came and marvelled, threw coins into the pool, then told their equally grand friends about this fabulous creature. Drabs, cinder-pickers and tub-women arrived too, screeched with fright and wonder at the sight, and spread the news. So popular was the curiosity that when Ma Gwyn’s party arrived on the morning of the second day of the Fair, a hastily contrived rival, ‘King Nepture and his Court of Sea Creatures’, had appeared.

  Susan was sent to spy on this, and returned to say that it was but a shabby imitation of their own spectacle: a roughly painted backdrop featuring an old man with long beard, sitting amid a host of fishing nets and holding a trident. This was dismissed as of no import.

  Ma gave Eliza, as a further enhancement to her role, a hairbrush and mirror fashioned from a conch shell. She was instructed to brush her hair, slowly and languidly, whilst admiring her reflection in the mirror.

  ‘And with yer first lot of customers this morning yer must be sure to brush and sing with extra refinement,’ she said, ‘because Claude Duval is waiting in line.’

  Eliza frowned. She knew she’d heard the name before, but couldn’t remember where.

  ‘Monsieur Claude Duval – ’e’s French, you know – is the very best, most genteel gentleman of the road.’

  Eliza nodded, remembering now what she’d heard at Clink.

  ‘’E ’as an eye for the ladies,’ Ma added, and she took out a dingy handkerchief and rubbed it over her face, wiping away the sweat which had gathered in the fine hairs of her top lip. She winked at Eliza. ‘Ladies of all ages!
’

  ‘How shall I know which is he?’ Eliza asked.

  ‘You shall know soon enough,’ Ma said, ‘for when you catches sight of ’im your breath will catch and your ’eart will go to thumping, for ’e’s the most comely man that ever could be looked upon.’

  And when Claude Duval entered, a foot taller than any man there and twice as handsome, Eliza’s heart did indeed miss a beat. He was accompanied by a richly dressed, masked woman, however, and though he smiled at Eliza and blew a kiss, he and the woman – who was clinging to him like ivy – did not stop in the tent for more than a moment.

  In spite of herself, Eliza found that she was almost enjoying her time as a mermaid. Her life had been drab, sour and unpleasant for weeks now, but for the last two days she’d been transformed into this truly fabulous, glittering creature, marvelled at and admired by everyone who attended the Fair. Of course, she reasoned, she wasn’t a real mermaid, and those people who flocked to see her wouldn’t have been interested in the ordinary Eliza – but wasn’t that just what those in the London theatres did all the time: pretended to be other people? And there was no doubting how much they were admired.

  The curious continued to pour into the tent. They leaned across the pool to try and touch her, walked around the rock pool to see her from the back and called across to ask questions, wanting to know where she was caught, how she had been transported to London and if she ate fish to keep herself alive. Many threw extra money into the pool to hear her voice and several men made lewd comments or asked questions of a sexual nature which Eliza pretended not to hear.

  Whenever she sang, a hush came upon the tent, no matter how many people it held or how riotous their mood. Eliza devised a ditty about the ‘wild, stormy sea’ and also amended slightly the prison song about being ‘far, far from home’ and these went down well with those who crowded in. Whether they actually believed that she was a real mermaid or not, Eliza didn’t know. That didn’t seem to matter much.

  On the third and final day of the Fair, Ma Gwyn’s daughter Nell appeared with a group of youths and young actresses – a party of perhaps twelve persons who paid extra to have the tent to themselves. They seemed so gay and happy when they appeared in the doorway with their feathers, furbelows and exaggerated mannerisms that Eliza, who’d grown bolder over the last two days, immediately dropped her head so that her face once again became almost entirely hidden by her hair.