The Strange Adventures of H

by Sarah Burton

  Then Janey asked me a lot of questions about my past, having correctly ascertained that we were of the same profession, but I was careful to mention nothing of my real past, and let Doll do the talking. It transpired that Janey was going to live with the lady she had invited, and thought I might go too. It all seemed most encouraging but I was so tired I went back to sleep again, with Puss at my side.

  It seemed only moments later, but must have been some hours, that Janey woke me suddenly and said I must make the best of myself as the lady was here and I must put my best foot forward. As it turned out there were two ladies, and they made a mighty challenging and interesting pair. Mrs Fotherington was extremely tall and thin and Mrs Cresswell was exceedingly short and fat, so they were like an amusing picture in a child’s chapbook and it required me in my half-fevered state to exert some control over myself not to see them as made-up characters, but as real people. As I soon found out, in Pris Fotherington and Mother Cresswell, I had the honour to be in the company of two of the most infamous bawds in London. However, by their fine but not over-fine dress and by their discreet and sparing use of paint, they looked almost as respectable as any lady my aunt would entertain, were it not for a rather alarming wig worn by Mother Creswell, which she must have chosen for its colour (orange) rather than its size (a little too small).

  Janey introduced us and then went to make tea. Mrs Fotherington and Mrs Cresswell settled themselves on the only two chairs in the place, and considered me.

  “She does indeed have a face,” said Mrs Fotherington.

  “Janey’s a good girl,” observed Mrs Cresswell, “she wouldn’t send me on a wild goose chase.” Then she addressed me. “How long have you got, dearie?” she asked.

  “Not long. Not long at all I believe,” I answered.

  “Oh she speaks well!” exclaimed Mrs Fotherington.

  I cursed myself for forgetting Doll.

  “I can speak as well as you please when it is warranted,” said H, “or as common as you like when it serves, missus,” said Doll.

  Mrs Fotherington clapped her hands in delight.

  “Oh she is a rare one. She might do very well.”

  Mrs Cresswell looked at me earnestly.

  “Have you worked for anyone before?” she asked.

  “Only for the gentlemen,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “I mean to say, did you look after your own money and live in your own place, or did you have a bully – a gallant – a gentleman to look after you?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s only me,” I said.

  “And… you haven’t been managing?” she said gently.

  “No,” I said, and felt my chin begin to wamble, but held fast.

  Something passed between the two ladies which seemed some kind of assent or agreement that I would do. Janey had come back in the room and was serving tea and I heard her tell Mrs Cresswell that I had no family and no friends and this strangely seemed to recommend me to her. There was more conferring between the two ladies and then Mrs Cresswell said:

  “Well Doll, I have a proposition to put to you. I keep a nice house for girls like you. No more street-walking, no more back alleys, no more over-a-trunk-in-an-out-room. I keep a nice house for nice girls and nice gentlemen. I look after my girls when they are in a condition – as you are – and I look after ’em when they’re sick. I’m like a mother to ’em, so I am. And in return I expect them to be good girls. I don’t stand for no nonsense. Not for keeping any gifts and suchlike. I am a plain dealer and I expect the same from my girls. My house has a good name and that is the root, I say the very root, of my success.”

  “A bawdy house is like a school,” chipped in Mrs Fotherington. “One child kills itself on a bit of bad meat and it takes years for it to recover its reputation. Ladies like ourselves cannot afford a bit of bad meat. For bad news has run a mile while truth is still putting his boots on.”

  “Indeed,” said Mrs Cresswell. “Bad news spreads like wild flowers.”

  “Wildfire,” said Mrs Fotherington.

  “And wildfire,” concurred Mrs Cresswell. “You only have to agree to stay long enough to recompense me for looking after you in your time of need, and then we can both reconsider terms. What do you say, Doll?”

  26

  The next day I was feeling much stronger and Janey and I set off for Mrs Cresswell’s, whom we were now to call Mother. Fortunately, Tobypuss (as Janey and I had agreed he could be called) had ingratiated himself so well with Mother Cresswell that he also accompanied us. Her house was outside the city in Clerkenwell and had as many rooms as my aunt’s house, though they were smaller in size. We had a room each and Mother Cresswell put me and Janey next to each other on the first floor, so I should not have too many stairs to climb. She was able to have such a fine house she said “on account of the stink” and indeed the industry round about the area was concerned with saddle-making and leather and suchlike and did indeed stink most abominably, which was why, Mother Cresswell said, leather-making was banned within the city walls. There were many things, she said, that went on outside the city walls, that were prohibited within.

  “Are there no constables here?” Janey asked, as we both knew from our street-walking days that they were to be avoided, though if you were caught, they were not above taking a turn with a girl on the quiet and letting her go.

  “Them rogues?” said Mother Cresswell. “Oh yes, but I have ’em in my pocket my dears. You need not vex yourselves on that score.”

  According to Mother Cresswell the plague had ruined her business, along with those more legitimate trades, and though now some of her old girls had come back, she was restocking her house, as some of her girls had “gone to a better place”, which at first I thought might be Mrs Fotherington’s, but was set right as she added, “God rest ’em.” Janey and I now met some of the other girls, though Janey knew some of them already and they were a friendly and kindly collection of wenches, and did not have the sorry and bedraggled appearance of many of the whores I had seen in the city. Three of them were gathered in what Mother Cresswell termed her ‘saloon’.

  “Ladies, meet your new sister, Doll,” said Mother Cresswell. “This is Bessie,” she said, indicating a pretty girl who came from the North. “Tell ’em one of your poems Bessie,” said Mother Cresswell, explaining to us, “she is a very pretty poetess, is our Bessie.”

  Bessie stood up and said:

  “I know no man who’s worth a fart;

  So nowt but gold shall charm my heart.”

  Then she curtseyed and all the girls clapped.

  “A powerful good maxim,” said Mother Cresswell, “for what is a whore’s worst enemy, daughters?”

  “True love,” they chorused.

  “Just so,” Mother Cresswell approved. She turned to a tall, slim and very elegant-seeming girl. “And this is Kat. She has a certain je ne sais pas.” And then to a rosy-faced smiling girl, who was pleasingly plump. “And this is Winnie. She has joy de vie. You’ll meet the others by and by. Now,” she addressed us all, “Doll will be staying with us as a guest until she has passed her hard bargain and is recovered. Then she will be working here until she finds her feet again.” Mother Cresswell seemed at pains to emphasise that my staying there was a temporary arrangement, to be renegotiated at some point.

  “There ain’t much chance of finding your feet when you’re flat on your back,” quipped Winnie and the other girls laughed.

  “Joy de vie,” smiled Mother Cresswell. “She has it in spades.”

  Then Mother Cresswell went out on some business and the girls made a great fuss of Tobypuss, and were very kind to me and solicitous about the baby, as it turned out Winnie was also expecting, though had only just discovered this. They were remarkably incurious about my past, which suited me, and in general it was very rare that anyone spoke of their life before joining the trade. It was as if I had entered another world that existed side by side with the ordinary world, but had differ
ent rules.

  As it was a Sunday, it was the girls’ day off, though they said if there was great demand Mother Cresswell relaxed this. We were all up quite late in the saloon that first evening, some of the girls playing cards, and I was beginning to feel quite at home, and helping Janey write a letter, when a terrific commotion set up in the street. Winnie ran to the window and looked out.

  “It is the Viscount and his cronies,” she said, “and in no fit state to call on ladies.” At this the girls all laughed.

  Then a hail of stones hit the window. Seeing my alarm Winnie said, “Don’t mind ’em, Doll; the bullies often break the windows. ’Tis a way they may vent their frustration when their guts are full of ale and their pockets are empty.”

  Even Mother Cresswell, who was a little deaf, had been disturbed and bustled in. She opened the window and shouted down.

  “What is your will, gentlemen, to be knocking up respectable women at this hour?”

  “A whore! A whore! A whore!” came the chorus and more stones were thrown at the windows.

  “And what will you give us?” asked Mother Cresswell. “Let me see your purses,” she demanded.

  Then there were some discouraged noises and cursing and presumably nothing was produced to persuade Mother Cresswell to open the door and admit the gentlemen, for she called down: “Do you see the sign of a banker here? Or a money-lending Jew? We give no credit! Come back on the morrow, when your purse matches your inclination!” and she slammed the casement shut. She sat down and employed herself feeding tidbits to Tobypuss, who had quickly become her favourite. She seemed quite unconcerned although there was still more shouting and more stones thrown at the windows, so that I feared they were like to break.

  Then Mother Cresswell sighed, got up and threw the window up again.

  “Do you hear me, you dogs? Will you make me call the constable? Hearken to my words, and if you are deaf, as you seem to be, read my lips: no fee, no fuck.” And she slammed the window down and there was silence. “Come along, my dears,” she said to us sweetly. “Come kiss your old mum goodnight. Time for bed.”

  27

  It did not take the girls long to discover that I was a mere apprentice at the trade, and little better than the citizen wives whom Mother sometimes employed, who were whores, as it were, only part-time, and otherwise stood at their husbands’ counters in inns or shops or coffee-houses, or pursued other trades, applying to Mother only when times were hard and they needed a little extra money. We were not encouraged to mix with these “amateurs” as Mother termed them, and indeed had little occasion to, Mother’s role often consisting in arranging an assignation elsewhere and handling that delicate aspect: the money.

  When the girls apprehended how green I was they gave me many hints on how to conduct myself in future, particularly regarding the avoidance or escape from nasty customers: that is to say, those that will hurt you. I am sorry to say that even in her delicate condition, Doll had encountered such men, and on one occasion had been beaten senseless and left in a gutter, where the watch had found her early the next morning. She also had some scars on her buttocks, indeed I still bear them faintly, from a devil who took a horsewhip to her, while assuring Doll it gave him, if not her, great pleasure. The girls were very kind in this and other things and said it was a marvel I had survived so long, given my remarkable ignorance of life on the streets.

  As I was not working, I busied myself helping prepare meals and keeping the house clean and tidy, though in truth I was not much help to the maids as my back ached terribly and my stomach was so swollen I could barely turn round without knocking something over, which was a source of great amusement to Janey.

  “Watch out! Mind your backs there and make room!” she would shout when I went down the corridor, “There’s an elephant loose in the house!” (I was not terribly insulted at this until some years later, when I saw an elephant, and then felt very humiliated indeed.) I kept out of the way when there were gentlemen present in the saloon as Mother said that she didn’t mean to seem unkind but the mere sight of me might put them off. On these occasions I stayed in my room and rested and read. Mother had given me a little pin money and the first thing I had bought was a book of plays, which I loved to read, and on other occasions the girls loved to have me read to them, and this used to remind me of the hours Evelyn and I spent in the library at Cheapside, causing me to reflect that that was in another lifetime, when I was someone else.

  Mother of course was her own library of wisdom on the subject of the gentle craft, which she maintained did more to promote matrimonial harmony than any church vows.

  “Married people ought to learn to love bawdy houses, as Englishmen love Flanders: it is better that war is maintained there than brought home to their own doors,” she would say. She felt we girls offered a civic service, which, among other things, protected respectable women from the importunities of lustful men, who could not govern their appetites, Mother said, any more than a hen could govern a fox. She was quite clear that men, not women, were the weaker sex, and had to be indulged like spoiled children, and that women were harder and tougher, and God made us that way so we could bear children and bear hardship equally. “There are some women you may never get to the bottom of,” she would say, “but you can size up any man in a twinkling.” I did not think that Mother liked the male sex very much at all, but rather as my Aunt Madge had not liked to eat celery; it was not an aversion, she merely did not see the merit in it. And while she was kindly to me, she drove a hard bargain, and having heard how she had dealt with one girl who had kept back money from her, I should not have liked to get on her wrong side. I had a home now and would do nothing to risk losing it.

  We were sitting in the saloon one afternoon, and my back was aching worse than ever and I had not been able to get comfortable all night and was all day shifting in my chair and getting up and sitting down and I noted the girls were looking at each other in a meaningful way and I began to realise the baby might be on its way.

  “Lie down on the daybed if it will make you easier,” suggested Janey, “and I will rub your feet.” I struggled to stand up, which was by now quite comical to watch I imagine, and suddenly felt an alien sensation of pressure released, as when you let the cork out of a barrel, and suddenly realised I was all wet and stood in a puddle of water.

  “I think I have pissed myself,” I said, and all the girls, as one, suddenly leapt up and started running in all directions.

  “The waters have broken!” exclaimed Winnie.

  “I’ll make ready her bed!” said Frenchie.

  “I’ll put the copper on!” said Kat.

  “There, there, now,” said Janey, putting her arms round me. “It’s alright. Do you feel sick?”

  And I vomited in response and considered the mess I had made of Mother’s rug and felt most sorry for myself and commenced weeping.

  “Fetch clean sheets from the great trunk on the landing!” Mother ordered Kat. “Not the best ones! And make up my bed, not Doll’s. There’s more room.”

  And suddenly I felt a great twinge in my back and had to hold on to Janey and not move for a moment. When it passed she had me sit down and between them those blessed girls managed to undress me and wash me and put me in a clean shift, and now I had stopped crying it was quite comical to see how, although they all tried not to show it, they were quite astonished to see, when I was naked, how absolutely enormous I had grown, for I am only of a low stature and a small frame, and my great belly must have made me seem like a very large fat pea in a very little pod. The girls were then anxious to get me to bed, but Mother and Janey (who, it turned out, had delivered no fewer than three of her own brothers and sisters and one of her sisters’ babies) opposed this and said it was better that I could move about if I wanted to, and now nature must take its course, and we should permit me to do whatever made me easiest. And indeed I was glad of this as the twinges grew into great waves of pressure and when they were at their height I did not know what to
do with myself and could not have lain still.

  Because of all the kindness around me I was not afraid, and it was pretty to see how excited the girls were, especially Winnie as she was expecting too, and for the whole of that afternoon and night they were as good as real sisters to me, and although they were supposed to be available for work, in the end Mother got tired of keeping gentlemen waiting with various excuses and gave up and locked the front door and declared it a half-holiday.

  Janey explained there would be a long time of hard twinges before the baby came, as first babies always took an age to arrive (and then she had the goodness to whisper in my ear and check it was really my first), and I was just to be as comfortable as I could be, and as soon as I felt any sort of urge to push, I must say so straightway, as I should by rights be in bed by then. I confess I do not know why I give these details as nearly every woman knows only too well what it is to give birth, but perhaps because it was the only time I ever did, and the outcome was so memorable, it all remains very vivid to me to this day.

  I think I must have been among the lucky women as none of the labour was past endurance and it was all more hard work than agony. After one of the very powerful pains they got me into Mother’s room and helped me onto the bed and she chivvied all the other girls out, but I begged that Janey stayed, which Mother seemed reluctant to permit, but seeing my distress, allowed. There was a little dressing room or closet attached where Mother had Janey put the hot water and clean linen ready to bathe and dress the infant, and in truth her room was much more convenient than mine and, between pushing when I was incapable of thought, I thought that very kind of her.

  When the first urge to push came it was so irresistible I thought if God Himself ordered me not to push I could not have obeyed Him. After that I seemed to be pushing for hours and it was at the point where I began to wonder whether I had the strength to carry on that Janey cried out “The head’s there! I can see the head! Look Mother!” And Mother looked and cried, “Push Doll! You’re nearly there! Push!” And with these encouragements, I pushed with all my might, and when I thought I could push no more, still pushed, and to cries of delight the baby came out.