The Petticoat Men

by Barbara Ewing

  The figure in pink and white was so very lovely, there beside the orchestra with pink roses in her hair. As she began to sing, the echoing, excited room became oddly quiet; a few last stragglers emerged from supper for the voice was lilting and pretty, and rather sad in an enjoyable kind of way, and people sighed a little as they listened. Violin strings chorused (with perhaps just a touch too much sentiment) around the pretty voice.

  Rose of the garden

  Blushing and gay

  E’en as we pluck thee

  Fading away!

  Beams of the morning

  Promise of day

  While we are gazing

  Fading away!

  A tear or two fell, tumultuous applause ensued and Stella, Star of the Strand, gave a genteel wave with her white-gloved hand to her appreciative audience. Regrettably in the crowded ballroom just at this moment, a woman – perhaps it was a woman – fainted (or, to put it more prosaically, passed out); she was quickly handed through the crowd to one of the side rooms while voices called to the stage.

  ‘More!’ came the cry. ‘More! Encore!’ and finally Stella was persuaded to embark upon another number and again there was relative quiet on the first floor of Mr Porterbury’s Hotel and the lovely old Irish song began.

  When, like the early rose

  Eileen Aroon

  Beauty in childhood blows

  Eileen Aroon

  When like a diadem

  Buds blush around the stem

  Which is the fairest gem?

  Eileen Aroon.

  Stella, Star of the Strand, would then have sung another verse, but in chorus with the very last lovely line (slightly spoiling the ending), there was an exceedingly loud scream from one of the discreet side rooms: not so much a scream of terror, more a screech of outrage. (Unfortunately, however, whatever its origins, it was so very loud it was certainly heard right down to the Strand.) There was also the very clear sound of a slap, several slaps; they echoed slightly and at once voices rose. Doors banged, champagne spilled, enquiring footsteps hurried upwards from below. Mr Porterbury looked deeply alarmed; there were respectable guests staying at his hotel; he searched at once for Mr Gibbings in his mauve gown. A man with his braces showing for all to see emerged into the ballroom, hair ruffled; he was so angry he punched a wall, somehow ripping the elegant wallpaper, deeply offending Mr Porterbury who deplored violence, especially violence done to his hotel. Somewhere (it could be clearly heard) a woman was being shushed and placated.

  ‘I have never been so insulted in my life! He – he—’ But the voice obviously simply could not bring itself to elaborate further.

  ‘Sssshhh, Nancibelle dear, sssshhh! The whole of London will hear you! It was a misunderstanding.’

  ‘I want to go home! I did not misunderstand! It is disgusting! I want to go home!’ The voice rose to a crescendo.

  Another voice interrupted: a man? a woman? it was not clear.

  ‘Well, dear, frankly I think you should go home to the nasty little abode from whence you emerged! It was me he beckoned to follow him into this private boudoir, not you, you cheap and ignorant little St John’s Wood trollop!’ and there was then further violent verbal altercation, screeches, further slapping, and the sound of sobbing: all these sounds emerged from one of the discreet side rooms very indiscreetly; whether it was male or female sobbing was difficult, at this juncture in the evening, to judge.

  Stella, Star of the Strand, descended from the platform.

  The orchestra tried to play on valiantly.

  Several couples stepped on to the dance floor rather hesitantly.

  But more or less, with champagne and eggshells everywhere, and the torn wallpaper, and rather shocked enquiries from below – and the realisation that it was almost four in the morning – the ball, at this point, disintegrated.

  Because of subsequent events, this ball at Mr Porterbury’s Hotel, and several others like it, became somewhat notorious. They were gossiped about in gentlemen’s clubs and particular backstreet venues and certain private publications in what can only be described as a pornographic manner – with much mention of stiff pulsating members and open orifices spied in the side rooms off the ballroom. Nevertheless it is indisputable that those who had actually been present at this most amusing evening, those who had had the pleasure of hearing the dulcet tones and ladylike presentations of Stella, Star of the Strand, would of course have reacted with complete outrage – in a witness box in a court case, say – to such pernicious lies.

  3

  ‘Give me champagne, Susan!’ cried the Prince of Wales, and he actually threw his hat across the drawing room of the house in Chapel-street of his most intimate and long-standing mistress. ‘You and I have fifty minutes before I must dine with the Prime Minister and I, my dear, require much champagne and ministration from you!’

  The Prince of Wales was extremely relieved.

  It was perfectly well known (but of course never publicly mentioned), by the aforementioned mistress, and by the upper echelons of society, and by servants in fine and not so fine houses – and by hansom-cab drivers – that the Prince of Wales seemed to be able to manage several liaisons at any one time in little pre-arranged afternoon visits all over London.

  However, today the Prince had finally emerged – only just untainted – from the scandalous Mordaunt divorce case in which His Royal Highness, among others, had been named by Sir Charles Mordaunt, the wronged husband. This accusation, which nothing could induce Sir Charles Mordaunt to withdraw, had been mentioned at some length in the newspapers.

  The Prince – and his long-suffering but loyal and loving Danish wife, the Princess Alexandra – had been outraged that his unfortunate public naming (out of spite, obviously) had resulted in newspaper coverage that was less than supportive. Eventually the Prince had been forced to stand – oh, unheard-of impertinence! – in the witness box during the case. It had taken much political and judicial behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to prevent His Royal Highness facing any sort of cross-examination; it was inconceivable that the dignity of the heir to the Royal Throne of England should be besmirched in such a manner. Instead the Prince was questioned politely (the word ‘deferentially’ is a word that might perhaps be used) by lawyers for the defence.

  ‘I would like to ask Your Royal Highness if you are socially acquainted with Lady Harriet Mordaunt?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I wonder if I might ask if it is true that on some afternoons Your Royal Highness paid visits to Lady Harriet Mordaunt when her husband was not present?’

  ‘Very occasionally; only if I happened to be passing.’

  ‘Did anything of any nature likely to offend her absent husband, occur between you on these visits?’

  His voice was loud and clear and royal. ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness.

  ‘No questions,’ murmured the prosecution.

  But public opinion and journalistic coverage was not deferential in some cases, and apart from the unforgivable fact that The Times had actually reported the case and mentioned the Prince, an also unforgivable – nay, disgusting – article was splashed insolently over the pages of one of the less conservative newspapers.

  The great social scandal to which we have frequently alluded has now become blazoned to the world through the instrumentality of the Divorce Court. Every effort was made to silence Sir Charles Mordaunt; a peerage, we believe, was offered to him. All the honours and dignities that the Crown and Government have it in their power to bestow would readily have been prostituted to ensure his silence.

  We have no hesitation in declaring that if the Prince of Wales is an accomplice in bringing dishonour to the homestead of an English gentleman; if he has deliberately debauched the wife of an Englishman; – then such a man, placed in the position he is, should not only be expelled from decent society, but is utterly unfit and unworthy to rule over this country or even sit in its legislature.

  However, today, the v
erdict had been given that had led straight to the Prince’s champagne-imbibing and other delightful activities with his mistress in Chapel-street. Lady Harriet Mordaunt, aged twenty, the offending wife – who had certainly received letters from various gentlemen not her husband and who had recently given birth – was pronounced insane by the court, to the relief of many people (except her husband who therefore could not obtain a divorce). Because if she was insane, she was not, therefore, responsible for her wild accusations against other gentlemen, including His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales – who had given her two high-stepping ponies, certainly.

  Which her husband had shot dead.

  Mr Gladstone had already spoken gravely to Queen Victoria.

  The Queen could not bear Mr Gladstone: his booming voice, his ridiculous high collar, his business antecedents, his pompous manner in addressing her.

  ‘But I feel sure, Your Majesty,’ the Prime Minister insisted in his – it is true – somewhat booming tones, ‘that giving the Prince some real work to do, letting him see some official papers, perhaps sending him to Ireland, might be of great benefit to the renown of Your Majesty’s family.’

  But Her Majesty had answered disdainfully that she would not hear of giving her son and heir any work of importance, as he was not fit to have any hand at all in affairs of state. Her Majesty was now in the ninth year of mourning following her husband’s death. She wore black at all times, and refused almost all requests to be seen in public or to carry out royal duties, but continued to ask for money – from the public purse – to maintain her family’s position. She knew perfectly well that the unbecoming (not to say rakish) activities of her married, eldest son, the Prince of Wales, did not help her case but she did not quite understand perhaps the feeling about the monarchy that was growing in parts of the country. The Queen advised Mr Gladstone, with much certainty, that her subjects loved her.

  It was Mr Gladstone who understood that royalty was becoming more and more unpopular in certain quarters with the almost-disappearance of the reigning monarch; he felt it might be difficult to weather another such ‘revelation’ as the present one. (He did not quite put it into those words.) But when he delicately raised with the Queen the subject of the purpose of the Royal Family, she remarked to her intimates that he addressed her as if she were a public meeting.

  The Prince himself, ensconced with his family and his coterie in Marlborough House, did not want to go to Ireland in the least. But he had had a terrible fright.

  His mother might not have admired Mr Gladstone but the Prince of Wales was extremely grateful to him, and (after his relaxing fifty minutes in Chapel-street) he and the Princess Alexandra dined with the Gladstones in their large house in Carlton House Terrace where more champagne was consumed (especially by His Royal Highness who was particularly affable and jolly). Late that night Mr Gladstone, who often wrote of discreet matters in his diary with no comment, was discreet once more, recording that the Prince and Princess of Wales had come to dine with a large party. But later he stared out at the dark, shadowed trees across the Mall and said to his wife Catherine, ‘This is a dangerous time for the Royal Family and I do not know if they are entirely aware that it is so.’

  The Prince had certainly been shocked at the public reaction to his private business. What is more, for some weeks afterwards, apart from his being written about so disrespectfully in many of the newspapers, the Prince of Wales was booed at race meetings and his carriage hissed upon in the streets. He and his wife grimly continued planting trees and cutting ribbons, regally.

  As for the unfortunate young Lady Harriet Mordaunt, she might or might not have been insane at the time of the court case – perhaps she was merely pretending as the prosecution intimated (under her father’s guidance, possibly in confidential collusion with the advisors to the Prince of Wales) – but she certainly became insane afterwards. She spent much of the rest of her life in a lunatic asylum, and never caused the slightest trouble to the Royal Family ever again.

  That another scandal was about to emerge that could embroil both the Prince and Mr Gladstone was unthinkable.

  4

  EVERY SUNDAY MY brother Billy buys a great pile of newspapers, he reads every blooming newspaper in England it seems to me, the Reynolds Newspaper even though it shouts (especially about the Royal Family), and the News of the World and the Weekly Times (which calls the House of Lords “The House of Obstructives”) and all those gentlemen’s papers as well, like The Times and the Telegraph and the Pall Mall Gazette. He’s newspaper mad! The one that entertains me and Ma the best is that shouting one, the mad old Reynolds News, the loud headlines make us laugh. And the Illustrated Police News always has big gory drawings on the front page.

  Well. Well – well I have to start somewhere.

  One Sunday, it was the first Sunday in May and a sort of chilly spring morning, well that Sunday we grabbed those newspapers as soon as Billy got them in the door, a bit like maniacs we were because we already knew that Freddie and Ernest, two of our lodgers, were in some sort of trouble.

  Because on Friday a really unruly policeman had left his police cab right outside our house – neighbours heads looking out of all their windows like rows of cabbages – and he came rudely up to me scrubbing our front steps and insisted on pushing his way into our hall, asked for Freddie and Ernest’s room.

  ‘What do you want their room for?’ I said, scrambling up from the steps still holding the scrubbing brush.

  ‘Either a freak or a lark, young lady!’ he said to me back, and he went straight in, looked about, took up gowns and corsets and powder, even old discarded stuff they kept in a portmanteau in a corner which was full of clothes they meant to clean one day, and photographs and papers, and then he had the cheek to put a lock on the door of the room and took the key with him.

  ‘Bloody stop that!’ I yelled but he didn’t and I should’ve thrown the blooming scrubbing brush at him in his stupid policeman’s uniform. But as soon as he disappeared with all the things Mr Amos Gibbings, another of our casual lodgers, came rushing in. And he smashed the police lock open, and took up a case of dresses and some jewellery in a hidden box and also some gentlemen’s clothes and shoes and two top hats. And me, I went running after him as well: ‘Whatever’s happening, Mr Gibbings? Why did the policeman take Ernest and Freddie’s gowns and things? Why are you smashing our door?’

  ‘Sorry, Mattie, tell your ma I’ll pay for it fixing,’ and off he went moments later with the case and trousers and top hats, he had a cabriolet waiting. As Mr Gibbings when he lodges with us always pays his bills I wasn’t thinking of the money at all, just the shock of everything – the rude policeman driving off with the gowns, and next minute a cabriolet driving off with Mr Gibbings and clothes and boxes and nobody explaining anything to me, as if I was just a demented rag doll requiring to be ignored in the hallway of our house.

  Old Mr Flamp had come out of his room by now. ‘The world’s full of madmen, Mr Flamp!’ I yelled at him and he nodded and said in his quaky old voice, ‘I’ve always known that, Mattie,’ and shuffled off again. Then later still that same policeman came back again, found the broken lock, and ranted that things had been stolen.

  ‘They aint been stolen!’ I shouted at him. ‘They belonged to the gentlemen who lodge here sometimes and if you ask me it was you who’s the thief!’ He was in too much of a hurry to say more but over his shoulder he said ‘I’ll be back, young lady,’ as he rushed off again.

  After all that palaver I had sat on the front steps of our house in the spring evening, with a shawl still for the weather, waiting for Ma and Billy to come home, peering down Wakefield-street looking for any sign of them. Billy has all different hours at his work but he was home first that day so I took him inside so the nosy neighbours who’d already seen plenty wouldn’t hear anything more and I told him what had happened and then we waited, a bit nervous, to tell Ma.

  Ma is a bit deaf and can be sort of hot-tempered very occasionally, so we was
glad she was out when the policeman came, we didn’t fancy her and the policeman shouting our business – she’d gone to the market and then she was visiting one of the old lady neighbours she takes soup to – we call them her “soup-ladies”. Maybe Ma would have shouted at Mr Gibbings as well as at the horrible policeman, nah, that’s wrong, Ma doesn’t really shout, not much. She looks. And sometimes she sort of ruffles up and that means she’s angry, so be careful. And just occasionally she bashes bad people and she might nearly have bashed the policeman that day if she’d been here, he was so rude.

  Most Sundays Billy keeps his own serious papers till later, and reads to us – not that we cant read ourselves but he reads out loud to us like our Pa used to, out of the News of the World or Reynolds News, or the Illustrated Police News: all sorts of weird and wonderful stories, and we dont clean the rooms on Sundays, most of the lodgers have vacated by Sundays anyway. Sometimes we’d have competitions to see how different the very same story – a murder, a scandal, a wild attack – can be told in each paper, our favourite papers and Billy’s other papers, we would laugh till we cried almost, at the same story going through different tellings.

  ‘Let it be a lesson!’ Ma would say. ‘Never believe what you read in the newspapers!’ but the different stories was our entertainment. Or we’d read out some of the Advertisements:

  MYRTLE: contact at once, without fail. I’m warning you.

  ITALIAN LESSONS: in your own home. Signora Spotuni, Lady Professor from Paris.

  PODOPHYLLIN: a certain cure for liver, piles, wind spasms.

  Or we’d play cards for farthings. We sit in our little back parlour all cosy, often we light the fire, we did this cool spring day, Ma and me with our feet up and us all having a sip of red port, our favourite, and our Pa’s old strange tropical plant still growing in one corner in a big pot even though Wakefield-street was hardly tropical. We’d had it as a little one when Pa was alive, we’d had it for years and years and it was still growing, we’d heard it was called a Joshua tree, we weren’t sure, but we looked after it most carefully and polished its leaves and thought of our Pa. I usually love Sundays.