by Sarah Burton
Janey had told us that the girls, having nowhere else to go, had returned to Winnie’s aunt’s inn, and having lost all their belongings in the fire were reduced to the utmost extremity and had not the faintest idea how to shift for themselves. Kat and I accordingly revised our plans, sent some money to the inn to relieve their immediate want and to buy mourning garments, enclosing a message directing them to tarry there until Mother Cresswell’s funeral when we would all be together and discuss the future.
We then spent the next two days converting Mother Cresswell’s hoard into hard cash, making it both easier to divide and more portable. Besides, we had no idea what the jewellery was worth. Kat was vastly knowledgeable about jewellers, as she was in the habit of immediately selling any gifts she got, for she had a widowed sister with many children and a sick mother in the country to support, and she managed this side of things. I looked after Janey and the baby meanwhile, and we began to become quite the little family.
Finally, the whole fortune was encashed and one night we counted it all out, and then counted it a second and third time to check we had not made a mistake, for the total sum seemed an incredible fortune.
51
There was no wind the day of Mother Cresswell’s funeral, and the London smoke thickened the air, veiling the city in a grubby grey. On hearing of her friend’s death, Pris Fotherington had assumed charge of the management and cost of the funeral, which was to be held in Clerkenwell, for although Mother Cresswell’s parents were buried in Cornhill, bawds and whores (like hangmen, actors and others on the margins of the world which wants their services but does not want to admit them as full members) cannot of course be buried within the city walls, so she was not to be laid alongside her family, but alongside her neighbours. However, such niceties over margins seemed not to trouble those who had known Mother Cresswell and who now paid their respects. It was quite astonishing to see how many people, and of what quality, attended, or sent their coaches. You could read the heraldry of half the great families, old and new, of our nation, Kat said, on the doors of the carriages which followed Mother Cresswell to the church. All the neighbourhood also seemed to have turned out to watch the procession pass, even the tanners pausing in their bloody work to stand hatless and silent as we passed. Mother Cresswell, it must be said, was well known for her charity in the locality.
For our part, the girls from Mother Cresswell’s house did the old bawd proud. The Clerkenwell sisterhood, swelled by former members, whom Janey, Kat and myself joined at the church, took up two pews at the very front, and behind us sat Pris Fotherington’s girls, and then whores of the other great London houses. I recognised Damaris Page, the great bawd of the seamen, who kept two houses, one for officers and one for the lowly sailor, accompanied by her cattle of both degrees. Mother Bennet, Mother Ross and Mother Temple were all there, their girls tricked and trimmed for the occasion, and sailing behind them, the most famous whores in London: Sue Lemming, Betty Lawrence and Jenny Cromwell, in all their rigging. All in all, there must have been more than a hundred whores present, and to see so many, in full paint, ornament and mourning garb, gathered together in one place made, though I say it myself, a most magnificent sight. Quantities of jet had been procured from somewhere, and as well as gloves, Janey and I had given each of the Clerkenwell girls pearl ear-rings as a kind of advance against the fortunes they as yet knew not were to make them so happy, so we all gleamed and glistened in the gloom like diamonds in a mine. The yards of black stuff in our mourning veils had surely left bare every draper’s shelf in London, and there could not have been an ostrich in all Arabia who did not run about bald of his black feathers that day. Mother Cresswell would have been, as we all remarked afterwards, most gratified.
There was something in the ritual that followed, in the extravagance of it and the strangeness of it, which made it feel as though we were not merely marking the passing of one infamous bawd, but that this was a memorial in a sense of all those poor whores who had passed, and would yet pass, unremembered into unmarked graves; the painted faces who were there one day and gone the next; those we had known, those we did not know, those we had yet to know, and of course, ourselves.
On a day of such wonders, I was not surprised to recognise the presiding clergyman as Hole-In-The-Sheet, who I am sure did not recognise me, for he had made a point of never looking me in the face. Today of all days, and for the first time in the whole of our acquaintance, he made me laugh. After he had read the story of the Woman Taken In Adultery, and we had all been admonished not to cast the first stone unless we were without sin – which met, unexpectedly, with a sustained round of applause – he said some prayers before he delivered his homily, and we were all most interested to see how he would manage this.
“Many years ago,” he began, “Mrs Cresswell made me promise that, when the time came, I should deliver the oration at her funeral. She asked most particularly that I should speak only well of her. This, of course, has caused me no little difficulty.”
This provoked a titter, which, gaining confidence, grew into great laughter, which ran round the church. Hole-In-The-Sheet’s face gave nothing away. He waited until the noise had died down before continuing:
“However, I can truly say that our dear departed sister was born well, lived well and died well.”
At this there was a little amused consternation as we wondered how he could justify this.
“That is to say,” he continued, “she was born Cresswell, lived some time in Bridewell, and died in Clerkenwell.”
As this sunk in, applause and some cheers broke out, which grew and were sustained for some time. Then we sang Psalm 139, which I discovered, to my surprise, I largely had by heart. As we began, the words reminded me most painfully of home, and they seemed to speak not of God, but of my father: my all-knowing, all-seeing, all-judging father.
“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.”
And I remembered how Father had laid his hand upon Evelyn, when she had begged him not to turn our sister Grace away.
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.”
And I fully attended for the first time to these words as we sang them: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there.” And I began to understand that in setting myself apart from my old world, my family and home in Hertfordshire, my aunt and home in Cheapside, I had unwittingly set myself apart from God too, believing that just as my family could never love what I had become, neither could He.
I continued to listen as I sang: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” And though I reasoned that I had not felt Him holding me in the plague year, or when I had tried to do away with myself, I had, in fact, survived, and perhaps His hand had indeed led me, although I had not known it. I continued to sing as if in a trance, as if a light were breaking not upon me, but within me, and at the end of the psalm I was reminded of what Godfrey had said, that I did not see the good that was in me.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
It was something of a revelation to admit to myself the possibility that I was not quite perhaps the hopeless case I had tended to believe, for if there was good in me, might this not mean that I had not been abandoned? And if God loved even Mother Cresswell, as Hole-In-The-Sheet assured us He did, might He not also love me? These thoughts w
ere consoling. I had not been in a church, I realised, for years now, and I wondered whether chance had brought me here at just the right moment, in time, at least, to set little Mary on the right path. I decided that we must have her baptised and I would be her godmother, if Janey did not object.
I put these thoughts aside as we followed the coffin out to the churchyard where we saw Mother Cresswell into the ground. I do not think I have ever been to a merrier or more strangely affecting funeral, and the generosity of those who attended was also something to behold, for everyone knew Mother Cresswell’s daughters were now homeless and penniless, and they were showered with many kind gifts as parting tokens.
Frenchie and Bessie had sobbed extravagantly throughout the proceedings, and even Winnie had lost her joy de vie, and I realised that though Mother Cresswell had done terrible and wicked things, in other ways she had indeed been like a mother to these girls, and she had, as I had reflected more than once, taken me in when I was at my lowest ebb and least useful to her. I was even prepared to admit that she might have truly believed that the wicked deeds she had performed were “for the best”. But while I allowed that God might forgive her, I myself could not, despite the holy thoughts I had been entertaining, for she had deprived me of the only children I would ever have; I could not think on her memory without anger and bitterness, and any tears I may have shed that day were not for her but for myself.
There was, of course, a horrible beauty in the way she had met her end. The two surviving arch-villains in my story had destroyed each other. If Fricker did not swing for setting the fire, he would be transported, that much seemed certain, and a great weight of anxiety was lifted from me. I began to feel what real freedom was like and found it most agreeable.
Pris Fotherington had arranged the averil to be held at our local inn, the Cock in Hand, and there the generous supply of funeral biscuits proved not enough to soak up the quantities of strong waters that were being consumed, and Janey, Kat and I prevailed upon Winnie, Bessie and Frenchie to come away with us before Pris Fotherington’s girls began dancing on the tables.
I need not repeat here the information we then imparted to them, and the disbelief and tears with which they received their unexpected fortunes of eight hundred pounds each you may easily imagine yourself. Suffice it to say that that evening as we bid farewell to each other at Islington it would have been difficult to find a gathering of six happier young women in all England. As Janey and I prepared to quit for St James’s and Kat was about to set off for her new life under the care of her kind keeper, Winnie, Bessie and Frenchie still struggled to believe that, though that same morning they had all been homeless paupers they were this evening free of their old lives and mistresses of their own destinies. It was hard leaving, and we kept singing another song, and proposing another toast, and embracing each other for the last time again, but finally Janey and I tore ourselves away.
As our carriage rolled out of Islington I looked out of the window at the Moon which that night appeared unusually lovely.
“Janey,” I said. “Do you think there is a God? I mean, do you really believe in Him?”
“Pfffffff!” said Janey. “I always believed in ’im. But I’m beginning to think now that He believes in me and all.”
And we hugged each other and travelled home in silence, looking at the beautiful Moon.
PART THREE
‘HALCYON’
52
I may truly say that my time as a Miss was the happiest part of my life. My lovers – as they now considered themselves to be – visited me on their appointed day of the week and I otherwise led a life of leisure. Janey was the happiest I ever saw her, and my recollections at that time are of her going about her domestic duties fairly singing her head off. When I had a visitor she played the maid to a fault: all deference and discretion before “the mistress” and her guest. Little Mary grew fat and bonny, and the most pleasurable part of the day was the morning, when Janey would bring her into my bed while she dressed, and I would play with her and make her chuckle, which was the prettiest and merriest sound I think I ever heard.
Sunday was the best day of the week, being our day off, and began with church for me and Mary. Janey did not object to Mary going, as she had not objected to her being baptised, but drew the line at attending church herself.
“He knows where I am if He needs me,” she would say, and that was that. After church, if the weather was fine we would go for a walk or a drive and dine at The Bear, purely for the pleasure of crossing the bridge to do so. Sunday afternoons were reserved for visits by Godfrey, whom we had persuaded to stand godfather to Mary, and she loved him extremely, and we would play games and read and he would tell me how things went at Lincoln’s Inn Fields – for my aunt never did move out – and life was, in fine, most sweet.
Godfrey had quickly become both devoted and indispensable to my aunt, who soon began to fret at the unconventional, not to say rackety, appearance to the world of their combined household (or ménage, as she described it, in a kind of scandalised whisper, according to Godfrey). Concerns for ‘appearances’ had been thrown to the wind in the social chaos immediately following the fire; however the old world was soon nailed back into place. A widow and a single gentleman (for Aunt Madge never doubted Godfrey was a gentleman, and of course, in every aspect excepting the vital detail that he was not born one, he was; I think we have all known true-born gentlemen whose real actions did nothing to deserve that description) could not live under the same roof without expecting to excite comment of the most unpleasant sort, sooner or later. Yet she soon found she could not do without Godfrey, who calmly, gently and authoritatively managed every problem which arose, which, had she been left to her own devices, would have sadly perplexed my dear aunt. Frederick, blessed dear cousin Frederick, provided the solution.
Godfrey, he observed, already fulfilled all the functions of a professional secretary to his mother, and therefore should be properly invested with that title. This also conveniently dealt with the small matter that, once the Duchess’s lease expired, Godfrey was not contributing in any form to the household exchequer, a point which made him most uncomfortable. The more I heard of Frederick, the more I yearned to see my cousin again, and merely enjoy his company, yet I acknowledged the sad impossibility of this. In any case, my aunt’s problem was resolved, and Godfrey continued as a member – the most exalted member – of the household staff, while continuing to be my aunt’s best friend, closest confidant and comfort. Frederick, according to Godfrey, prompted by my curious questions, in no sense resented this, but loved Godfrey almost as a brother. This I could well believe, as Godfrey was, I believed, utterly loveable, and Frederick had always shown all the best qualities (that is to say, the best qualities in my eyes) which could be expected of his sex and background. Frederick was a gentleman by any standard.
I had reordered my life too. Since Godfrey now called me H or Halcyon, despite my entreaties, so did Janey, and as soon as I divined that they did this purely because it annoyed me, I stopped complaining, in the hope that they would tire of it. They did not. (Janey, who actually called me ‘Haitch’, which was even more irritating, in fact spent an entire day musing aloud on what ‘Haitch’ might stand for, and made Godfrey laugh until his sides ached by deciding, in the end, that it stood for ‘Hore’.) And so I stopped complaining about being H or Halcyon, and in fact it suited me to break with common Doll, for I was now a woman of quality.
At first my week was exclusively devoted to my superior regulars from Clerkenwell and ran thus: Monday – Lord A (my favourite); Tuesday – Sir Robert; Wednesday – parliament man; Thursday – city merchant; Friday – Jasper. Saturdays I used to keep clear, and would go out, often to the playhouse, and cultivate potential admirers. I often met up with Kat for this purpose, for respectable women, as we now appeared to be, do not go to any place of resort singly if they wish to remain respectable. By these means when I lost a lover I had a ready replacement. Thus, when my city merc
hant went to India, and my member of parliament died suddenly, and Sir Robert was forbidden any excitement by his physician, I allowed the attentions of another panting cully in their stead. Of course, my new gentlemen had not known me in my previous life, and thus conducted themselves towards me somewhat differently: as a mistress – professing love, sometimes promising marriage at some distant date and in some never-to-be-realised circumstance. They liked to be seen about town with me and to show me off before their companions. While all this had the merit of being more entertaining than simply the main business, it was all emptiness and show, and I sometimes found it tedious and always tiring.
Neither did my new breed of gentleman care to deal in cash, for it soothes a man’s sense of himself that he does not pay to have knowledge of a woman, but merely lies with her and gives her gifts. Such gifts, though often worth more than I would have bargained for, were full inconvenient to translate into money, and besides, my cullies often wished to see me wearing the jewellery they had bestowed on the lovely Mistress Halcyon. Though they must have known they were not the sole recipients of my favours, this fiction was maintained on both sides, and should I meet one of them at the playhouse, or at the pleasure gardens, or walking in the park, while I was in the company of another, it was something we never spoke of when we were alone together on our appointed day.
I made each new gentleman seduce me from the path of virtue afresh, first scattering in his path many objections and obstacles, as I always delayed the moment of first consummating his passion for as long as possible. This assured him I was a lady. During this period he would grow hotter and hotter, and use all his powers of persuasion. He would ask to see me alone – this I naturally declined, being chary of my reputation, but in such a way as began to suggest I longed that it were possible. Eventually he would persuade me into agreeing to a meeting in some quiet place, and he would believe he was now gaining ground, especially when I allowed him some familiarity, and to kiss me finally. We would then reach an impasse, where he was satisfied of the strength of my ardour and most dissatisfied at the strength of my virtue, for I would not grant him the last favour.