The Strange Adventures of H

by Sarah Burton

  “It’s a little boy!” cried Janey. “You’ve got a little boy Doll! Oh but he’s a tiny little dear!”

  “Let me see him,” I said, but Mother thought it better to wash him and make him warm first. “Oh Janey!” I cried, clasping her hand, “I still want to push!”

  “That’s alright,” Janey said, “the afterbirth has got to come out yet.”

  So I pushed again a few times and Janey called out “Blind me! There’s another one! Blind me if it ain’t twins! And blind me if it ain’t another little lad! No wonder you was such a whopping size, Doll!”

  Janey cut the cord and carried the child to the dressing room where Mother took him from her, while I was weeping with relief and surprise and of course joy. Janey seemed to be gone for a long time, though I may have been a little delirious. But when Janey came back to me to deal with the afterbirth her face was serious and her lip quivered. She took my hand.

  “Doll, be brave darling but one of the little lads has gone.”

  “Gone?” I said. “Is he dead?”

  “Yes Doll,” said Janey, “I’m sorry,” and I think the way her voice broke when she said it upset me as much as anything, for Janey never cried.

  Then Mother came to the door and looked at Janey and shook her head.

  “What?” asked Janey, and then, in disbelief, “Lost both of ’em?”

  Though many years have since passed, of my grief that night my pen refuses to write.

  28

  After Christmas, Doll was well enough to go back to work, though I still lacked colour and was thin after so many weeks of illness. I had got very sick after the twins died and the doctor was sent for several times and said I should probably not be able to have anymore children, which indeed proved to be the case. So that was that.

  I think H died for a time when the twins did, or went away somewhere, but there was an emptiness where she used to be anyhow.

  At the end of the first day I’d been back at work, as I kissed Mother goodnight, she hugged me and whispered, “In a way, though it won’t seem it now, it all turned out for the best.” And I tried to believe her. My body was recovered but every night I had bad dreams, often about little Joe and Sal, who I had failed to save in time, from which I would awake in a panic and with extreme sensations of grief and guilt.

  Doll became rather wild and intemperate and took on more customers than anyone else and the ones that no one else wanted as I became entirely obsessed with earning enough money to get out of the game.

  “Pfffffff! You know everyone says that,” observed Janey. “Your oldest most decrepit whore in Dog and Bitch Yard maintains she’s just working till she’s got enough to stop. We all dream of building up a little fortune, of buying respectability where no one knows us, of setting ourselves up as widows with an independent income, maybe even of marrying a decent man and having a family. No one ever does though.”

  In fact, there were not many old tarts in those days. You sometimes came across them in taverns, as some were powerful drinkers and only earned enough to keep them from being thirsty, and Doll could drink well enough and sometimes a bit too much, and when they were in their cups and tending to the maudlin, those that had served the profession before the Commonwealth would tell you of how hard times were when the playhouses were first closed down. That was going back over twenty years so these were rough old birds. All the places, in fact, of assignation, dried up. Some of our sisters, Mother once told me, were even driven to church to find trade in the days of old Oliver, whom they hated as much as if they had been Cavaliers. Some of the poor wenches – and here she would affect to sniff and wipe at her eye at the memory – were even forced into honest occupations or – and here she would pretend to look about her as if she were going to say something slanderous – took husbands. When the second King Charles rode into London – it must have been May Day for there were maypoles up, taken by our trade to have significance – it was the poor whores, Mother averred, who were the first on their knees in the streets weeping for joy.

  The restoration of the King and the restoration of the profession went, as you might say, hand in hand. There was even a new class of whore: the private whore, or Miss. Both Mother Cresswell and her friend Pris Fotherington would work themselves into a passion when they discussed this subject, saying these private correspondences and arrangements were destroying public trading, threatening to ruin the houses they kept, and there should be a law. I must confess I learnt a deal of history under Mother’s roof, as before that I had no notion of the politics of the late troubles save what I had learned at my aunt’s – namely that under the Commonwealth birth did not count for privilege, property was redistributed, women achieved more liberty, censorship ended, working boys were sent to school, and equality before the law began to be established, and that when Charles II came back mercifully everything went back to normal.

  Mother Cresswell’s house, I soon learnt, was known for its types, which is to say that the girls played speciality parts. Bessie did a line in virginity ravished which would have made the most hypocritical actress blush. We girls (egged on of course by Janey who was always full of mischief) used to sometimes tease her by calling her Oohsir, for Bessie knew what protesting was. We used to listen at her door for entertainment when custom was slack; it was all: “I hope you mean me no harm, sir! Ooh, sir! You do not mean to… ooh sir! You will not hurt me, sir!” and so forth, and “Surely it is too big, sir!” shortly followed by “I am undone! Ooh sir! Ooooooooh siiiiiiiir!”

  Bessie usually wore a white frock but also had a milkmaid’s costume. She had meant to play the milkmaid as another string to her wanton innocent part, but the first gentleman she tried it with made her milk him like a cow. After she told us this story we called her Moosir for a bit, but it did not stick as he never came back.

  There was Frenchie, who was, as you might guess, from France, and she used to specialise in the gentlemen that liked to be tied up or whipped. Bessie and Winnie played sisters when required, while Kat played the lady to men who liked to be a footman ravishing their mistress, and she was also Cleopatra on special occasions. This kind of playacting suited me no end as I chose to keep everything on the surface. And there was a kind of satisfaction in giving a man exactly what he sought, and thinking of new ways to add spice and surprise to it, so that he would come back and ask for you again. I had no particular speciality – like Janey I made it up as I went along.

  And though I say I kept everything on the surface and kept Doll between me and everything else, I did have a soft spot for Janey, and was as fond of her as I think I ever was of anyone but Evelyn, for she did not appear to look at you without seeming to care about you and even when she teased, like saying I was an escaped elephant, there was affection in it. And she scolded me when I drank too much, which no one else did.

  29

  It had occurred to me that as no one in my Cheapside life had ever known of my pregnancy, and there was no child as proof of my shame, I might be able to pick up the pieces of my old life and maybe even return to my aunt’s household, if I could come up with a convincing explanation of my long absence. But to do this I needed H, and H was not there. I seemed to lack the confidence to be able to put H together again, she had become such a complex thing, a broken thing, somehow scattered and escaping, whereas Doll was simple and robust and undemanding. H had always thought of others, but Doll thought only of herself, and this single-mindedness made her strong and safe.

  It was Doll, in fact, who began to cheat Mother Cresswell. There were two rules the importance of which Mother impressed on us with great vigour: we were not to steal from the gentlemen, and if our gentlemen gave us extra money or other gifts we were to give these to her. (What happened to these gifts we had no idea, though we were all aware of a great key Mother kept tucked in her bodice on a grubby bit of ribbon and guessed that, as we never saw it used in the house, it was the guardian of our surrendered bounty.) The first rule was easy enough to obey, for the fact that
whores are notorious thieves, and that a man knew he did not have to watch his pocket at our house, made it a popular resort. In any event, we would have been fools to steal from our gentlemen, as our house was not in one of the corners of town known for the trade (Mother Cresswell maintained this aided our reputation as a “house of quality”) so a great part of our business depended on our regulars and on recommendations. The second rule, however, was less rigorously observed. While we would not steal, we felt entitled to keep gifts, and so only rendered to Mother sufficient so as not to invite her suspicions. Most of the girls laid out their extra money on clothes which, as well as being an ornament to their trade, they took pleasure in, not having a great deal else to do in their leisure time, while others sent it home to their families. I continued my habit of making my own clothes and instead stored up my little fortune as you never know what lies around the corner and I was determined never again to be poor. Also, I had had to work for two months for nothing but my bed and board to pay off my debt to Mother for keeping me when I first came and afterwards when I was sick, so I felt I had to make up for lost time. I do not in any sense mean to justify theft here, for I did not think this was a fair rule, and in any case Mother made quite enough out of our labours without the gifts as well. And there was something else, for there was a kindness in gifts that there was not in ordinary earnings. And most of us had little enough of that in our lives.

  I became quite friendly with some of my regulars. There was Jasper, who was a youthful heir to a vast fortune, which he was borrowing against with great determination. He used to come with a flotilla of young sparks who used to roister in the saloon, peppering the nonsense they talked with curses of new invention (for they considered themselves as in the very vanguard of fashion) such as “Stap my vitals!” and “Damn my diaphragm!” and “Slit my windpipe!” and seemed to shout and laugh as much as they did anything. I am not sure that they came to the bawdy house for any other reason than that they could say they had been there, as they made a lot more noise than their spending warranted. The rest of the company (which altered in composition with each visit) seemed in a manner, hangers-on, but Jasper spent enough to justify the imposition, buying drink for them all, and of course paying for my company. He always hailed me as though it were a great surprise to find me there, such as greeting me, “Sink me ten thousand fathom deep, if it ain’t Miss Dollie!” But he was easily satisfied and had the virtue of being quickly dealt with. Indeed there was something a little sad about these boys who had so much more money and leisure than sense, and they reminded me not a little of Roger and his playhouse bullies. They used generally not to mind who they got, but Jasper took a shine to me for some reason and as I said, he was easy enough to please and he had the advantage of being very generous with gifts, so he was a good one I could count on at least once a week.

  Then there was a member of parliament, whom I only saw in term time, but who would come punctually twice a week and lecture me at length on the depravity of my ways before testing the depravity of my ways until he was satisfied I was quite as depraved as he had left me the last time. There was a clergyman who evidently battled with his conscience all week before giving in and bidding me enact a range of outlandish scenarios which beggared even my imagination; in the pursuit of these he too liked to dress up, and afterwards he made me pray with him for forgiveness. Another priest would only have ado with me through a hole in the sheet (I kept one specially for the purpose) and would not look on me nor speak to me before or afterwards except to recite the Lord’s Prayer as he approached the point of no return. This, Doll jested to the other girls, was as good as going to church and full as inconvenient, which was as good an excuse for not going, as some of them did on a Sunday, as any. And besides, Doll had turned her face away from God.

  There were those that came and went, such as a sea captain who was often away for long periods, but when he was on dry land would come and see me nearly every night, quietly intent on making up for lost time, and married men who would come when they had fallen out with their wives, or when they had not fallen out with their wives, but often seemed to feel sufficiently uneasy to give some explanation as to why they had come.

  A wealthy merchant in the city told me I reminded him of a girl he had once loved very much and wanted to marry, but he had not the fortune at the time to match her dowry.

  “Could you not have run away?” I asked. “Married without the money on either side?”

  “Poverty and marriage don’t suit,” he said. “In any event, she would not entertain it. ‘Marrying without an estate is like sailing in a ship without ballast,’ she said. I had nothing to offer her, and in truth she was probably in the right. But I still think about her.”

  “Perhaps it would have turned out the same,” I ventured. “They say every marriage is stale within a twelvemonth.”

  He was still for a moment, and then said quietly, “Ah, but what a twelvemonth it would have been.”

  Even my own Jasper had been feeling for some time the increasing weight of his obligation to his family to “commit matrimony”, and when I asked him why he prevaricated so, he said darkly, “To have and to hold are dreadful words, Doll,” as if that explanation should suffice. Jasper had an ability to get under my skin which irritated me, as I found myself worrying about him even though I did not particularly care for him very much. I think I sensed early on, and indeed it proved to be true, that Jasper was forging an attachment to me which might become troublesome, though he had too little confidence ever to declare this. Yet I felt it was there, but as I needed the money decided not to address it until such time as it became obvious, caused difficulties and required dealing with.

  One of my married gentlemen, Sir Robert, as we lay on the bed one night after the business had been done (and this was a time when my gentlemen most freely expressed their thoughts), said, “The thing about you, Doll, is I can just come and take my pleasure with you. My dear wife, bless her, wants hugs and kisses and endearments, and in a manner to be courted all over again before she will give herself up. Why can she not be like you?” And I am ashamed to say I turned my face to the wall so he should not see the tears that welled up, for H put in an unexpected appearance, as she sometimes did at the least convenient moment, and H would dearly love to be hugged and kissed and told sweet things, but I pressed all this down and Doll said, in a light voice, “Well, perhaps you should try giving her a sovereign.” And he laughed, but I divined discomfort in his laugh and regretted what I had said as none of my gentlemen liked to be reminded that they paid for their pleasure.

  I believe things are in a manner today better in this regard, or at least that men are kinder to their wives than they then had license to be, or than was then the fashion. The incivility of husbands to their spouses was so proverbial that whenever voices were raised under her roof, Mother Cresswell would calm the situation by crying, “Forsooth, gentlemen, show a little courtesy – these are not your wives, after all!”

  I have since found that many people assume that men frequent whores merely for physical relief, and while it is true that many do, I found that others wanted an impression of real affection which they so lacked at home. In weaker moments I pitied them and pitied their wives that they were locked together in a loveless marriage until one of them should die. I think it made me a cynic on the subject of marriage, which as a girl I had hoped could be a love-match, but I saw few enough examples of this in reality. Yet, I reasoned, due to my occupation I would be likely only to see the rough end of the institution. Still, so many unhappy people bound unwillingly together seemed a terrible waste of lives which could otherwise have been quite tolerable.

  Lord A was my favourite. (Of course that was not his name but I do not like to invent one in case there is a lord of that name.) The minute I laid eyes on him I knew what was required. This one didn’t want a chopping loose-talking daughter of the night, but a bit of comfort and kindness thrown into the main business. A nice young lady of easy vir
tue was what he had an appetite for and that is what I gave him. He was neither very handsome nor very rich, but he was good-humoured and respected me and I liked him for that. And while I regarded all of my gentlemen as work, with Lord A it was a pleasant kind of work, for he would talk about his other life, about his home in the country and his house in the town, his business, his wife and his nephew who lived with them, for he had no children of his own, and diverse subjects as were preoccupying his thoughts.

  “Bring me a drink, Doll,” he would say as he pulled off his boots. “I am come to unbend myself.” And although it was all about him, I think with Lord A I was more nearly myself than I was with anyone but Janey. Sometimes we would dally and talk only, if he was tired, but mostly he would have his way, and I would squeal and shriek and make out he was the wickedest man alive – that was his pleasure.

  Janey too had a favourite, though hers was a more intense affair for she talked about her William so much I feared she was actually falling for him. He was the son of a duke, but a younger son, which is never a good sign, as they generally have no hopes of inheriting anything worth having, and consequently little care is taken with their education and little notice taken of how they spend their time (as so little is expected of them), and in consequence they tend to be a light, unreliable and rather spoilt breed of boys. I do not say William was a bad lot, as he was gentle and nice in his manners and seemed smitten with Janey, but there was something about him that was insubstantial, and I feared she invested too much feeling in a weak and unworthy vessel. But Janey could become mightily vexed when I spoke against her William so I learned to keep my own counsel on this score.