Fanny and Stella

by Neil McKenna

  Lucy, who was nineteen when Mamma departed this life, had brought up the two boys, with the assistance of Mary Batson and the kindly interference of two elderly aunts. As the baby of the family, Fanny was showered with love and attention and was frankly a little spoilt. Indeed, both boys were spoilt. Harry was tall and handsome. He could charm the birds from the trees, a talent he used to talk his way out of hot water, in which commodity he frequently found himself immersed. Trouble followed Harry like a shadow, and Papa used to despair of him.

  Frederick William, or Fanny Winifred, was altogether a different kettle of fish. He – or she – was quite unlike any of his siblings in looks or personality or demeanour. Mary Batson would nod and shake her head sagely over Freddy. It would often turn out this way, she was fond of saying, when the twelfth child was the last child and a boy-child. A changeling. A child of the fairy folk. And, indeed, for those with eyes to see there was something Puckish, something very sprite-like about Fanny, whose mischievous, joyous and playful nature made him into a regular Robin Goodfellow.

  It was hard to be angry with Freddy for very long. He was an appealing if curious child, with large, fluid eyes, a mouth that seemed too big for his face, and an abundance of protruding teeth. He was slight and pale, altogether sickly-looking, and was disinclined to sports or exercise – other than walking the streets and promenading in Regent’s Park – and he looked as if he needed a good dose of sunshine and fresh country air.

  Most of all, Freddy liked to sing and to act and to dance. He liked to dress up as a soldier or a sailor or, better still, a lady, and would caper about the house as a Duchess or a drab and make jokes until the servants’ sides ached with laughter. Or he and Harry would write plays and perform them for Lucy and for Papa and Mary Batson. Harry made a dashingly handsome hero, while Freddy would play the imperilled and lovesick heroine, and play her with such conviction and such verve that Lucy and Papa and Mary Batson would sometimes forget for more than a moment that Freddy was a little boy.

  Quite when it was that Freddy became Fanny, she could not recollect. Suffice it to say that she had not changed. There had been no great or sudden revelation on the road to Damascus for her (always a favourite parable of Papa’s). The Temple curtain was not rent asunder and nor had the scales fallen suddenly from her eyes. No. Becoming Fanny was a process of realisation, rather than revelation. For as long as she could remember, from before she had words to express it or explain it – before she had words at all – she had always been Fanny in her heart, she had always sensed she was different from other boys – but thankfully not from Harry. Never from Harry.

  Fanny could not even remember when Harry stopped calling her Fred or Freddy and started to call her Fanny or Fan. It seemed just to happen, and once or twice Harry forgot himself and let it slip before Lucy, who frowned, and Papa who would turn pale and angry. And all the time Mary Batson would chuckle to herself and shake her head and talk nonsensically of changelings and fairy folk.

  B ecoming Fanny was a slow and painful process, and as she grew older, she became more and more aware that the world as currently constituted did not always look kindly upon those who were different, upon those who did not conform.

  To this uncomprehending and uncaring world she was, she realised, an effeminate youth – an effeminate youth unrelieved by any conventional saving graces of beauty. Her head was too big for her body and her teeth were too big for her mouth; her skin was blotchy and inclined to pustules; her hair was wild and wiry; her eyes rather too close-set; her brows too dark; her nose decidedly too emphatic.

  Fanny could not help it. She had tried and tried and tried to change, to become more manly, to be more like Atherton and Alexander. But however hard she tried, she always failed. She was never in step with the merry dance of manliness. It was like chasing her own shadow. It eluded her. It evaded her. However hard she sought it, she was destined and doomed never to find it – in this life at least – and there were many nights and many days over many months and many years when Fanny would weep with frustration, shame and misery, and wonder why it was that she had ever been born.

  Why could she not be more like Harry, Fanny would often wonder in angry and bitter retrospects. They were cut from the same cloth, coined from the same mint. They were the same, but different. Harry passed. Nobody noticed and nobody guessed. He was just Harry, charming, handsome Harry, who fitted into the jigsaw of his life perfectly. Well, almost perfectly.

  But when it came to herself, everybody noticed, everybody guessed. Fanny could never pass, could never deceive, could never fit in. She was the odd one out, the ugly duckling, the cuckoo in the nest that nobody really wanted or knew what to do with. Nobody except Harry. And then she would weep afresh, with gratitude and love for Harry, and with sorrow that her Mamma was dead.

  When the time came, Papa decided not to send Fanny to school. He insisted that she should be a scholar-at-home, taught by Lucy and by Miss Isabella Norris, the governess who had taught all the girls, and though Fanny could not at first fully understand why Papa did not send her away to board at school like Alexander, or be a day boy at a school like Harry, she began to apprehend that her Papa’s decision was a strange amalgam of the best and worst of motives: best because he sought to spare her from the taunts and jibes of cruel boys who could not and would not understand her; and worst, because he wanted to hide her away from the world, to save himself and his family from owning to the shame of having Fanny as his child.

  It was a dark day when Fanny finally realised that she was an affront to the world, that her very being offended the world in ways small and large. She was not entirely a man and not entirely a woman. To be sure, she had the body of a man. Harry, who seemed to know everything about the bodies of men, had assured her she was a man. There was no doubt about it, he said. But Fanny craved the company of women and she liked womanish things, like dresses and dances and beaux. She could sew, she could knit, and she was at her happiest at home with her sisters, sitting quietly together, or down in the basement with Mary Batson, listening to the reassuring drone of the servants’ chitter-chatter.

  There were times, however, when Fanny was obliged to venture beyond the grand portico of 35 Wimpole Street and go into the world that she so affronted. It was hard. Eyebrows would be raised, gazes averted, backs abruptly turned. Sometimes she would be stared out of countenance, stared at like an exhibit in a museum, or like shoddy goods in a shop window. Glared at with looks of such hatred that she trembled and felt fearful. There would be muttered comments, whispered threats and imprecations. Sometimes she was unceremoniously pushed or shoved aside, spat upon. Or stones were thrown at her. Urchins would hurl abuse, and furious red-faced gentlemen would come up to her and deliver foul-mouthed volleys about who she was and what she was and the terrible fate that would soon befall her – from the noose to the fires of Hell. And she would turn pale and tremble but stand her ground.

  Thank goodness for Harry. It was Harry, of course, who so patiently explained everything to her, though where and how he found it all out, God only knew. If she was being truthful, it was not so much of a shock, or even a surprise. Harry’s disclosures only served to confirm what she already more than halfway knew. Fanny knew that she liked men in ways that other boys could not conceive of, and she knew that her feelings were like those of her sisters. And she knew that Harry was the same.

  Harry’s disclosures made her feel she might, after all, have some purpose in life, that she might eventually meet and fall in love with a gentleman and live happily ever after. But in the meantime, Harry told her, there were any number of men in London – and not all of them gentlemen – who would want to go with her. He would take her. He would show her. Fanny listened with bright eyes. She felt a shiver of excitement and anticipation at the prospect.

  Even though she and Harry both loved and desired men, Harry was different. He had never evinced the least inclination to dress up as a lady or a serving wench or a fallen woman of the streets (and y
ou did not have to venture very far from the front door of 35 Wimpole Street before stumbling across whores by the dozen plying their trade). Lucy, who had inherited her Mamma’s compassion, called them sad creatures, though even she was discomfited by the more brazen types. The elderly spinster aunts merely stuck their noses in the air and hurried past as if to avoid a noxious emission.

  But Fanny was fascinated and dazzled by the gaudy peacock colours of these women, by their blowsy ease and raucous laughter, by their painted faces and their billowing, untidy hair, by the smell of sweat and cheap scent which seemed to cling about them, and by other, strangely compulsive smells, which she would have thought she shouldn’t like, but she did. And the whores were, by and large, nice to her. They would call her ‘Dearie’ or ‘Margery’ or ‘Mary-Ann’ or ‘Miss Nancy’, and most of the time it was not in a nasty way. Sometimes she would talk to them, and she found – to her surprise – that she was drawn to them and liked them more than she thought she would. They did not judge her like the others. They did not look down upon her. They would curse and cuss her in a friendly way, and then she would answer back with a haughty toss of her head and they would laugh uproariously.

  That it was all wrong in the eyes of God, Fanny of course knew. Between those endless prayers and Bible readings at home and the droning, drowsy sermons in church on a Sunday, Fanny had come to understand the meaning of Sodom and Gomorrah. Harry had told her she was a sodomite (or she would be when the deed was accomplished). Fanny did not altogether care for the word. Sticks and stones, she said to herself, may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.

  That it was all wrong under the laws of the land, she quickly discovered, and then wished that she had not. She was eleven or twelve when Harry first got into trouble with the police. The angry conversations went on for days behind the closed mahogany doors of 35 Wimpole Street. But Fanny heard enough about the wretched Italian boy, and Harry filled in the rest, swearing her to secrecy. Harry had been foolish and had fallen in love with a boy who abused his trust. Money was demanded and when no more was forthcoming, the boy carried out his threat. Harry was arrested and taken before the magistrate. It was all a pack of lies, he claimed, his handsome, honest face shining bright with righteous indignation. Fortunately his handsome, honest face carried the day and the case was dismissed.

  And then, two or three years later, when Fanny was fifteen or sixteen – she could not properly recall – Harry was arrested in Weymouth Mews in the middle of the night and there was a great to-do and much weeping and wailing and talk of prisons and hard labour. It was a great and terrible scandal, made even worse by the fact that Papa was a very distinguished judge. Harry had shamed himself, shamed his family and shamed his Papa.

  Harry was to go away, to disappear, and no one was supposed to know anything about it. And no one was ever to see him again, save for Papa, and perhaps Lucy (and Mary Batson, of course, as she was so old and it was thought that a permanent separation from her darling Harry would hasten her demise).

  But as the months and years passed, Papa relented a little, and Harry the prodigal son would sometimes return from exile in Scotland to the bosom of his family, and the blood of fatted calves would be spilt. But only at the small villa in Isleworth, and never, ever in Wimpole Street, for fear of discovery. And through all the long years, despite the separation, the bond between herself and Harry was unbroken, and even strengthened.

  What was to become of her? There were two, and only two, professions for the Parks: soldiering and the law. But the idea of Fanny going for a soldier was patently ludicrous. Even Papa had smiled at the idea. So law was the only option. Papa had decided that the best and most profitable – by which he meant morally profitable – course was for Fanny to be articled to a solicitor. He had a gentleman in mind, Mr Gepp of Chelmsford. A steady, slow, solid gentleman with a steady, slow, solid county-town practice.

  Judge Alexander Park fervently hoped and prayed that a few steady, slow and solid years under the watchful eye of Mr Gepp would rub off on Frederick, that his enthusiasms would be curbed, that his manner would become graver and more manly, that he would grow some sense – and perhaps even some whiskers.

  But the months and years passed and Frederick did not seem to be growing any sense at all. Quite the reverse. The older he got, the less manly, the more effeminate, the more extreme he became. There he would stand, a cigarette in his gloved left hand, his right leg bent slightly forwards, his hips tilted like a woman of the street. His hair would be teased and shined and curled, and he would reek of strong perfume. His face in repose was disdainful, but his eyes were like a lizard’s, dark and glittering and restless. He did not have to speak. He did not have to act. His very being, his very presence proclaimed and declared to all the world the sodomite that he was.

  It was a strange thing, but it was hard to imagine where Frederick had come from, or who he took after. Rack his brains as hard as he could, Judge Park could not recollect any family member on either side who bore even the remotest resemblance to Frederick. It was as if his son were undergoing a species of transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis to brilliant, gaudy butterfly, and there were times when he found himself half-believing Mary Batson’s nonsense about changelings and fairy folk.

  Frederick was now a gabbling, good-natured, prattling, gossiping, charming young man who seemed older – much older – and more worldly than his nineteen years, who caused heads to turn for all the wrong reasons whenever he entered a room. He was loud and lewd, and laughed uproariously at his own jokes. Ladies adored him, and he invariably had them in fits of hysterics. Men were either bewildered by him, or made uneasy or hostile by his otherness, by his difference (though a few, surprisingly, were flattered by his violent flirtatiousness).

  ‘Theatrical’ was the word, perhaps the only word (or at least the only decent word), to describe the young man that Frederick had turned into. He lived for the theatre. The theatre was his day and his night; his sun and moon and stars; his darkening storms and sunlit passages. There was little or no division between the dressing up and make-believe of the theatre and the dressing up and make-believe of his daily life. They were one and the same. All the world was his stage, and Frederick seemed to ricochet between melodrama, tragedy and comedy – especially comedy of the low and vulgar variety.

  There were times when Judge Park had to pinch himself to make sure that he was not dreaming, that he had not strayed into a fairy realm, or fallen down a rabbit hole and found himself in Wonderland, like the young heroine of Mr Lewis Carroll’s story. Frederick’s world – or that small portion of Frederick’s world of which he had caught glimpses – struck him as decidedly odd. It was a grotesquerie where the men were more like women and the women, though seemingly rarer than unicorns, behaved like men. Nothing was straightforward. Nothing was serious. All was surface. Nothing was substance. It was amorphous, ephemeral and inconsequential and yet, for its denizens, at least, it seemed compelling and all-absorbing.

  Of those denizens, from the few that he had met, Judge Park had formed a low opinion, a very low opinion. There was Mr Charles Pavitt, a plump miller’s son from Chelmsford who was some sort of professional actor. Then there was the fat and florid Mr Martin Luther Cumming who giggled constantly. Mr Cumming was an Oxford man, supposedly, though he had yet to hear an intelligent remark from him. There was Mr Amos Westropp Gibbings, with a girlish lisp and more money than sense. And finally there was Mr Ernest Boulton, a delicately beautiful young man with sad eyes and a startlingly lovely soprano voice. Mr Boulton was apparently Frederick’s best friend and boon companion and they spent hours closeted together, though how they had first met was a mystery that had never been satisfactorily unravelled. There were others, too, who came and went and went and came so often that they seemed to blur into one long, lingering shriek of effeminacy.

  Frederick’s passion for burlesque had led him into the deplorable habit, in Judge Park’s view, of dressing up in women’s attire and acti
ng the parts of women. But even Judge Park had to concede that sometimes he did this with consummate skill, having a natural bent for playing domineering duchesses and dowagers of a certain age with great flair and an eye for comic detail that made his audiences laugh out loud.

  What could he hope for, what hope was there, for this strange hybrid child, for his changeling son? He was under no illusions. His elder son Harry was tainted with sodomy. There could be no doubt about that and, however much Harry’s version of the incident in Weymouth Mews differed from that of Police Constable George White, it was clear to everyone that sodomy was at the very heart of the transaction. And if Harry was so tainted, so stained with sodomy, then Judge Park feared that there could be very little doubt that Frederick was equally tainted, equally stained with the sins of the Cities of the Plain.

  Judge Alexander Park was a devout Christian, ‘sound in principles, firmly and zealously attached to the sound orthodox doctrines of the Church of England, and pure and correct in his morals’. But devout though he was, devout as his dear departed wife had been, neither of them were Christians of the hellfire and brimstone variety. With half of those children born to him already dead and buried, Judge Park loved and valued those still left to him. He sorrowed and grieved and prayed for Frederick, just as he sorrowed and grieved and prayed for Harry. He could not but despise and loathe the sin, but he could not help loving the sinners. How could he not love his sinful sons? They were the flesh of his flesh, the fruit of his loins. And if that fruit was rotten, then he must shoulder some of the blame and some of the burden and he must do whatever he had to do, whatever could be done, to help and protect them.

  What could he hope for – what hope was there – for his errant sons? He could not bear to see them punished. The gravest penalty for sodomy had only been abolished a year or two ago, but ten years to life with hard labour was equally a sentence of certain death. Such a sentence would crush and break them within weeks, and their decline and death would be agonising and inevitable, and every night as he lay sleepless in bed he trembled at the prospect of the terrible fates that might befall his two sodomitic sons.