by Sarah Burton
When I finally reached the house at Clerkenwell I learned that Frenchie had got into some trouble and Mother Cresswell had been gone all day in pursuit of her, and that Winnie had had her baby, who was a dear little girl, to be called Rose, and all the girls were besides themselves with excitement, having assisted Janey in the delivery, and one would have thought from their accounts that each one was uniquely responsible for the child’s survival and that it had, by one token or another, identified each of them as its particular favourite aunt. It was perhaps not the best time to break to Janey, who was tired after the day’s travails, that I had been obliged to part with Tobypuss. She was mightily vexed, and though I tried to explain that Tobypuss in truth belonged to neither of us but had gone to his original owner who was an old lady on her own and needed him, she continued mightily out of order and reproaching.
All evening Janey was dinging about the house like a Fury, and even snapped at Winnie, so I kept out of her way as far as was possible, and was frequently summoned to admire Rose, and was told that she was the first baby to thrive in the house for many years, and then Kat and I wept a while together, for we had both lost babies in our time at Mother Cresswell’s.
Later that night, when Janey had calmed down somewhat, and stopped shouting so, and was reduced merely to the odd “Pfffff!” it transpired that she was particularly out of sorts because she had lent money to her William, which he had failed to repay. This struck me as most serious and the most fatal proof that she was indeed in love with him, for a whore gives love for money and the moment the transaction is reversed and she starts giving money for love it is only a matter of time before she is utterly undone. She made me swear to tell no one and said she forgave me about Tobypuss though she would miss the little toad for he had been a good companion to her in a hard time, but I knew she was only diverting my attention and appeasing me for I was angry with her for what she had done.
Mother Cresswell and Frenchie arrived home very late, and in horrible distress. Frenchie’s clothes were all torn and dirty and she had evidently received most harsh treatment. It transpired that she had gone to see her sister who lived with a family (she was a seamstress), and she had been helping her sister evacuate the livestock from the yard behind the house, when they had been recognised as foreigners and set upon by an angry crowd. The extent of the madness of the crowd can be imagined, for as Frenchie’s sister was running, carrying a dozen or so chicks in her apron to deposit them in a box in a cart at the end of the road, she was accused by some over-zealous patriot of carrying fireballs to throw into people’s houses, and once the cry had gone up that here was a Catholic arsonist, people who were quite strangers to her began to chase her. Frenchie had gone to her assistance, but could not get to her, and saw the crowd fall on her and then to save her own skin began to run away, but because she uttered some French exclamation, herself became the subject of the crowd’s wrath and had to run for her life, suffering many blows on the way.
“They did not know me!” Frenchie kept crying. Mother Cresswell had set off in pursuit of Frenchie as soon as she had learnt of the trouble against foreigners, to give her safe passage home, and had passed on her way the mob who had moved on to attack a Dutch bookseller, and arrived to discover Frenchie by her dead sister’s body, which had been horribly disfigured, namely by having had her breasts cut off. She was surrounded by the crushed remains of the chicks, some of which, in her shocked state of mind, Frenchie had scooped up and put in her pockets. I relieved her of this sorry stuff while Mother Cresswell raged against the treatment Frenchie’s sister had received.
“Now, I ask you, where,” demanded Mother Cresswell, “was the need for that?”
It seemed to me extraordinary that even in the face of a common calamity such as a great fire, people could turn on each other in this manner, but then I recalled how cruel the plague had made people to each other, and was obliged to concede that there is no disaster which can befall humanity, that we will not fail to make worse by our own hands, for it is fear that makes us cruel.
“Ignorance!” exclaimed Mother Cresswell. “She can’t help being French can she? It’s not her fault. I confess sometimes I am ashamed to be an Englishwoman, so I am, to see how a nation that could not even keep its own King’s head on should be so jealous and angry at a poor little foreigner. She speaks English as nice as what I do, don’t she?”
The next day I met Godfrey by appointment to learn how all went at his house. Aunt Madge, he declared, was a proper old fashioned darling, and it was clear to me from his account that, though she had for a period mislaid her wits, she had lost none of her old charm, and that Godfrey was mere putty in her hands. If I had thought I might have any hand in the management of her it quickly became clear that she and Godfrey had already made plans. She had immediately become apprised of his pecuniary embarrassment, he said, and had most delicately assumed control and responsibility for the household finances. Reg and Ted had already recruited a cook and two maids from the quantity of homeless humanity that flowed past their door, and Aunt Madge had affected to notice that some of the rooms were bereft of furniture only in so far as it might not inconvenience dear Godfrey if she had her own furniture sent here, which was currently Lord knows where, in a field no doubt, and the sooner it was got indoors the better. While Reg and Ted were gone about finding the furniture she asked dear Godfrey if he would mind very much if they stayed for a month perhaps, until she had sorted her affairs in town and could remove permanently to the country, which she did not relish on account of her natural aversion to mud, draughts, cows, stupidity, and other features of the countryside, but which she feared had to be faced sooner or later.
Godfrey had of course naturally assured her that she was at liberty to remain for as long as was convenient, that he only rattled around this great house on his own in any case, and he was delighted to be of service. He added (to me) that Aunt Madge confessed to being bewildered by the appearance of “the little painted lady” at Frederick’s request, and how Puss had come there, though she had written to Frederick at Oxford for enlightenment and so as he should know where to find her when he came to town.
Whether by the efforts of the militia and citizens, aided by the King and the Duke of York themselves, or by the east wind mercifully dropping, the great fire eventually ceased its relentless despoil of the city, leaving, so it has been calculated, only one in six buildings standing within London’s walls. I easily recall this figure, as it chimed in a kind of contrary tune with the plague toll, which had killed one sixth of Londoners.
39
When I went to see the devastation in the days immediately following the fire, I could not have found the location of Cheapside, nor any other landmark, had I tried, for blackened ruins and wasteland stretched from the river in the south to Cripplegate in the north, and from Fleet Street in the west to the Tower in the east so that not even streets could be identified. And though an end was made to the disaster, the memory of those few days in September will not be erased from the city until its last witness passes into the hereafter, so swift, shocking and devastating was its impact.
Its population shrunk by plague, and the city itself all but laid waste by fire, yet London carried on: men wandered in this vast grey desert, taking measurements and making plans. And so did we.
Life in Clerkenwell altered radically in the weeks and months that followed. A number of the refugees who had flooded into the quarter showed no signs of moving, indeed had nowhere to move to, and it became very crowded and uncomfortable with the result that much of our usual clientele found it too inconvenient to visit us. In addition to this our usual places of resort and assignation in the city were all gone, so that more whores thronged in what remained of the West End of town than could ever have been concentrated in one place in history, and pickings were slim. Mother Cresswell decided we should have to swallow our pride (such as it was) and open our doors to the more modest sort of patron, namely drawn from a new class of customer, com
prised of the great number of craftsmen drawn into London in order to build the city up again. This class arrived with extraordinary haste; it seemed no sooner was London gone, than it was to be made again, but better.
So it was out with the sons of earls and lords, the clergymen and the sea captains (although, to give my own gentlemen their due, they mostly continued to come to me, or arranged to meet me elsewhere, though for others of my sisters, who had not been so diligent in cultivating a regular clientele, it was all change) and in with the surveyors and architects, then the bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters and painters. I did not object to our new patrons, but they had shallower pockets and consequently the girls were obliged to work more, and there was more coming and going, and the house took on an improvised, transient air that I found unsettling. I began to think again of casting about for an easier way of life. As it happened, Janey’s fortunes took a change of direction at this time which was to have an unforeseen influence on my future.
She burst in one evening, flushed and excited.
“William’s putting me on the stage,” she hollered. “What do you think of that?”
“What does Mother say?” asked Kat.
“Pfff! She says it’s alright by her, as it’s good to have playhouse contacts, and provided I send business her way she don’t see no harm in it.”
The other girls congratulated Janey, but Winnie frowned.
“You want to be careful, Janey,” she warned. “Remember Cherry? She was picked up by a gentleman what bred her up for the theatre, learned her to talk, and move, and made her proud; give her clothes, plate, jewels and things, and she ran mad at the extremity of the alteration till he couldn’t stand her airs no more, and by the time he left her to ill luck and she lost her place in the playhouse, she was so unfit for any other way of life the last I heard she was drinking herself to death in a garret, without so much as a pot to piss in.”
“Janey’s no Cherry, though,” averred Kat. “She has a head on her shoulders and I believe she may well succeed. The men fawn upon the actresses so behind the scenes, and the tiring rooms always throng with admirers. Once her face is famous, even if she loses her William she can soon pick up another champion. What spark would not wish to walk abroad with an object of every man of the town’s desire on his arm? Everyone loves an actress.”
Mother Cresswell entered the room at this point, demonstrating an uncanny knack she had for knowing what had been said on a particular subject before she came in: “You need not fear for Janey on that score. She is as well quantified to be an actress as any, and more than most. I know not why Janey may not do as well as others, and she may be an example to the commonality that a girl may rise through this profession to the very precipice of society.”
“Besides, a player is but a whore writ large,” said Kat. “It is all games and dreams and gratifying the customer. We are all players, are we not?” And this brought back, with an immediacy that almost took my breath away and made my heart beat hard, as any memory of my past life tended to do, Sylvia’s friend Melissa saying “All women are actresses, are they not?”
“You won’t like the pay, Janey,” said Bessie. “Even Mrs Butler only gets thirty shillings a week and the men get twice that. At least in this game there is equality.”
“What have they offered you, Janey?” I asked, rather meanly, for I guessed the answer.
Here Janey looked a little abashed.
“Well, they don’t pay nothing to begin with, it’s like I’m an apprentice, learning the craft.”
At this the girls began to express doubts, and I felt sorry for pouring cold water on Janey’s news.
“Now, now, girls, let us have a little esprit de corpse,” admonished Mother. “Never mind the money, for there is more than one way to swing a cat. Janey will still have a roof over her head here and may earn her keep by throwing custom in our way. We must cultivate our connections in these hard times. I view Janey as our ambassador in town.”
We could all, in truth, see the sense in this.
“But what about your good name, Janey?” teased Winnie. “Everyone knows what actresses are.”
“When it comes to women, fame and infamy are the same thing,” asserted Mother with her usual unquestionable authority. “Die a maid or marry to be poor if you want a quiet life. If you want a slice of the cake you must pay for it with your name. And what is a name good for after all? It neither puts bread in your mouth nor clothes on your back.”
No one could dispute the veracity of this.
“In any case, why did the good Lord bless our Janey with such a powerful pair of lungs if she was not meant for the stage?” demanded Mother, to which again no one had an answer. “It is the girl’s destiny; it is her fate accompli.”
I said nothing more to all this. I considered William putting Janey on the stage was his way of discharging his debt to her, and a cheap way at that for he had exerted only influence and she was still out of pocket. I also considered he must be as madly and blindly in love with her as she was with him if he believed she could make a living on the stage, for this, I suspected, was a deal harder than it seemed, and demanded much more than a pretty face and a bold tongue, which were Janey’s principal assets. So I determined to keep my own counsel on the matter unless Janey asked me, which I knew she would not, for she guessed it.
Yet life is constantly surprising, and as it turned out, Mother Cresswell was right and Janey did far better than I had expected. She only had small parts to begin with, but she began to be paid, ten shillings a week. More importantly, her employment in the playhouse paid dividends to her sisters in Clerkenwell, and to me in particular, as she came home one day with the offer of unusual extra work for me. The King’s Playhouse, to which Janey was attached, had lost its women’s dresser and needed someone urgently. I did not see that I was any more fit for this job than anyone else, and did not greatly fancy it, although I thought it might be entertaining to be among the playhouse people, but Janey explained there was more to the job than that.
“They need a dresser what reads, to learn the actresses their lines.”
This made all the difference to me. I already taught Janey, who didn’t read, her lines, and the opportunity of this kind of work was more than I could resist. To be paid to read plays! It seemed such easy money.
“What would Mother say,” I said, “what with you gone to the playhouse already?”
“Pffff!” exclaimed Janey. “One step at a time. See if Mr Killigrew gives you the job first. But I’ve put in a good word and you’re to come tomorrow to meet him.”
So I said nothing to Mother the next day about where I was going except that I was on an errand, and made my way to the playhouse. The boy on the door sent for Janey and when she took me in it was most surprising to see how different the house looked when there was no audience and no candles lit, cold and hollow and a little shabby. Janey bade me walk about on the stage, which I did, and it was a mighty strange and pleasant feeling.
To go behind the scenes was most interesting and to see the quantity of cables for moving the scenes that they employ old sailors to work, so handy are they with ropes, and Janey, who was you may understand quite the old hand, said you must never whistle on the stage for they use a code of whistles to communicate, as they are used to at sea, and if you whistle on the stage you are like to get a scene dropped on your head and be killed. I was careful to remember this, and also, she said, to suffer no abuse at the hands of the sparks who came behind the scenes between the acts, for some of them thought any woman employed in the playhouse fair game, though if I chose to have ado with them this was my business of course and she laid a finger to the side of her nose and said Mother need be none the wiser on this score.
And then she let me wander among the properties, which were much finer than those Godfrey had shown me at the fair at Harlow, but it was strange to see so many all mixed up. A wooden leg lay next to a sword, a crown next to a head, and all manner of food made of paste, and I
had a similar unpleasing sensation as before: it was not so nice to see how poor they looked, close to in daylight, when they seemed so fine on the stage, by candle-light. And the costumes too were quite dirty and worn close to and looked rather like sad old ghosts without people in them.
Janey took me up some stairs into an untidy room full of papers and playscripts and introduced me to Mr Killigrew. I was a little afraid as he was not only the theatre manager but a famous playwright – and a wit. He looked up briefly from his writing, reached across the table and threw a bundle of papers at me. I was not expecting this but Janey was, as she caught it easily, untied the ribbon and handed the script to me.
“Go on then,” said Mr Killigrew. “Read.”
“Which part?” I asked.
“Any part,” he said, sighing.
Janey picked out a page.
“Shall I read the names of the characters and the directions or just the words the players say?”
“It doesn’t matter!” he cried. “Just read!”
So I read:
“Celadon: Provided always, that whatever liberties we take with other people, we continue very honest to one another.
Florimel: As far as will consist with a pleasant life.
Celadon: Lastly, whereas the names of Husband and Wife hold forth nothing but clashing and cloying, and dullness and faintness in their signification, they shall be abolished for ever betwixt us.
Florimel: And instead of those, we will be married by the more agreeable names of Mistress and Gallant.”
“That will do,” said Mr Killigrew. “Come at noon each day to teach the women their cues, then stay to help them dress for the performance and remain for any costume changes. I pay ten shillings a week.” And he resumed his writing.