The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters

by Michelle Lovric

  ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘I had quite forgot.’

  He produced from various pockets seven tiny gifts extravagantly wrapped. He laid them under the tree, next to our full-sized presents.

  Darcy failed entirely to be charmed. ‘Christmas presents for dolls?’ she asked him. ‘I hope that they are little rolls of string? So you can operate the dolls as marionettes,’ she suggested to him sourly. ‘As you already do with their originals.’

  None of us sisters wanted the consequences of reminding Darcy that it was she who had signed the contract, and she who had agreed to sell us. Meanwhile, Mr Rainfleury’s jubilations continued at industrial strength. Darcy could not dent them, not even with her spiky tongue and iron tone.

  He gloated, ‘Jumeau shall die seven deaths from jealousy whenever he sees these darlings!’ he rejoiced. ‘I’ve taken out an advertisement in the Gazette de la Poupée, just to make sure he does!’

  Then he told us how the great Parisian doll-maker had caused a sensation with his long-haired beauties, and kept whole streets of seamstresses busy sewing miniature dresses. There were entire shops that sold nothing but trousseaux for Jumeau’s creations.

  ‘And so it shall be in Dublin and with the “Miss Swineys”,’ Mr Rainfleury assured us. ‘So it shall be.’

  Chapter 15

  It was not yet a street, like Mr Jumeau’s enterprise, but the Swiney Godiva Corporation kept a large brick building fully populated with employees. A few days after a brief Harristown Christmas, we were driven – in two carriages to accommodate our skirts – to Mr Rainfleury’s factory. The unheated building hummed and rustled with the sawing, sewing and nailing of ‘Miss Swineys’ and their accessories. Shabby Dubliners of both sexes were bent over trays of eyes or sat stitching small clothes, nightgowns, skating costumes, dressing gowns and riding habits. Posticheurs were marrying clumps of hair to incised bisque pates. A few older women were seated at baroque-looking treadles that stabbed roads of black stitches into miles of cloth. Girls barely older than Ida sat fashioning miniature baskets, fiddles, umbrellas and photograph albums. Everyone’s fingers were white with cold, and their breath ghosted the air around them.

  Mr Rainfleury purred, ‘Each item will be monogrammed, of course, and can be collected separately by the public.’

  Of course the ‘Miss Swineys’ were a tint discounted in this mass manufacture. Their statures were shrunk from the magnificent thirty inches of our own dolls to an economical eighteen. The heads were still bisque, but cloth replaced the kid covering the composition bodies. Our own dolls’ silk petticoats were reproduced in cheap gauze. And the hair seethed in seven frighteningly familiar colours in great cotton bins suspended from girders in the ceiling. When I asked to see the apparatus that spun artificial hair from silk and plant extracts, Mr Rainfleury hushed me and drew me aside. ‘The room where that alchemy is performed must be kept locked. We cannot have our competitors spying on us! One of you girls, in your innocence, might let drop a word that could lead them to our secret formula.’

  I thought his tongue should smoke from that burning lie. He, for his part, looked at me with frank dislike. All attraction for my long hair was gone: he did not like the brain that worked beneath it.

  In silence, we watched the seamstresses, gluers and wig-makers. I looked under the table at their shoes, saw them thin and holed, and was sorry. Their eyes travelled over us nervously. They did not allow their faces to express any comment, but I was convinced that they must hate us for their poor wages and the cold in which they were forced to work. I was relieved when Ida said, ‘I believe we should go home directly, isn’t it?’

  She meant to Annora, and Harristown, I was sure.

  We had a real reason for not lingering: we had very little time. Like the newest recruits in any brothel, we were exceptionally busy. ‘Madam Rainfleury’, my latest name for him, had us working at a breathless pace.

  Now he’d invested his money in us, Mr Rainfleury took a keen interest in making us more famous. The greater the legend of the Swiney Godivas, the better their dolls would sell, and the higher the prices they and their miniature accessories could command. And I believe it also swelled the private pleasure in Mr Rainfleury’s merchant heart to imagine his pets the objects of general and commercial admiration.

  Darcy might have suspected how things would turn out, but she had been uncharacteristically disposed to reticence on the subject. So we younger sisters entered into this new chapter of our fame like kittens venturing out of the basket for the first time – unsure, fearful and always keeping an eye on where we might bolt back to.

  But I knew there was no safe place.

  After we visited the factory I crept down in the night to the desk in the drawing room. I wanted to read the grand Corporation contract Darcy had signed on our behalf. By the light of my candle, the words were plain and ugly for all the glowing wax, the black copperplate and the flourishes. The contract provided for no return, no change of heart on our side. We were bound to the Swiney Godiva Corporation without waiver.

  The only person who might withdraw without penalty was Mr Rainfleury himself.

  In fact – and to my surprise – ‘Miss Manticory’ made it easier for me on the stage. Although I was almost insane with my aversion to the little idol, she gave me something to cling to. According to our new Corporation contract, Mr Rainfleury’s dolls were to sell on the back of our shows, being displayed in the lobby where the audience passed the intermission. The dolls featured prominently in our act: just before the interval we all backed onto the stage, and held up our dolls above us with their bisque heads facing our customers. We made them talk in our voices – an animated conversation. Then slowly we ourselves turned round and took the dolls in our arms like babies and kissed them tenderly on their unyielding cheeks, making them seem like the most precious objects in the world.

  Exactly as Mr Rainfleury had calculated, this part of our act certainly cultivated desire for the dolls in our patrons. Their sales soon accounted for far more of our takings than our admission tickets did.

  The dolls had their own reviews: ‘Miss Enda’ surpasses anything we have ever seen, both in design and taste.

  One fanciful lady correspondent wrote:

  It is possible to believe that these enchanting miniature beauties are capable of exercising sympathetic magic – surely tending to their magnificent locks will make their adoring owner’s grow!

  ‘Think of that now!’ breathed Oona.

  Mrs Godlin from the Kilcullen dispensary wrote that gossip had it that the two daughters of the Master of Harristown had requested a whole set of ‘Miss Swineys’ for under their Christmas tree. She also told us that the Eileen O’Reilly had been seen with two black eyes glowering under her fringe and that her butcher father had passed a night in a stupor in the cells.

  ‘Shame he didn’t take the whole head off her,’ observed Darcy.

  Sales of the dolls doubled and then tripled. So it seemed perfectly natural that Mr Rainfleury should take charge of the Swiney Godiva show bookings as well as the dolls. For this purpose, he bought an enormous ledger with columns for travel expenses, costume costs, beauty preparations such as Cheltenham Salts, eau de Cologne, Elder Flower Water, stage properties, set painting and teas, all of which were deducted from the takings before the rest was committed to the bank account in Dame Street, to which Darcy alone had access, and from which she doled out weekly allowances with grudging hands, dropping six coins by each of our plates every Sunday evening supper.

  After a few weeks, Ida threw hers back at Darcy.

  ‘Want to see my money,’ she insisted. ‘The big money in the bank.’

  ‘That you would not,’ retorted Darcy, scooping up the coins and pocketing them. ‘It’s not a decent girl who’d ask such a thing. Think of your money in the bank like the geese doing the deed in the bushes and making more geese. You’d not be wanting to look at it. But you’ll be happy of the additional geese by and by.’

  ‘I alwa
ys looked,’ admitted Ida. ‘I want to go back to Harristown.’

  Darcy replied, ‘That sounds like an excuse for slapping some cheek to me.’

  At which point, Mr Rainfleury entered the fray with one of his amiable sentences. ‘And, Darcy, I have been meaning to speak to you about this matter of slapping. And pinching, and boxing of ears. In Society, ladies do not vent their grievances with acts of violence. They leash their tempers, Darcy. Like ladies, Darcy. Some incidents have come to my attention via third parties. We cannot have the public thinking that there’s any brutal behaviour in this nest of goddesses.’

  ‘Perhaps Society ladies do not have as much to put up with as I do,’ retorted Darcy.

  ‘I merely put the matter to you,’ said Mr Rainfleury, ‘and the thought that you would not want the “Miss Darcy” doll to be known as the virago of the Godivas.’

  Leaving Darcy for a rarity speechless, he bowed to the rest of us, and assured us that he had many good things to address on our behalf and must be off to do so.

  As well as our accounts, Mr Rainfleury had taken it on himself to enrich the content of our show, constantly suggesting refinements and additions, though he was no one’s Shakespeare and always concluded, ‘So, Manticory, you’ll write up the new piece that way, dear?’

  Mr Rainfleury rewon Darcy’s friendship by introducing a coffin into the act. The coffin came equipped with a gormless and infinitely flexible stuffed black cat which Darcy held up triumphantly before consigning it to the underworld along with all her other worldly treasures. The cat was laid in the coffin with its paws in the air. I wrote a special song about the grave-goods that Darcy’s corpse would take with her. As she sang, Darcy dropped her ribbons and crucifixes, one by one, into the silk-lined lacquered box – avoiding the cat – along with plentiful tears squirted from a perfume bottle concealed behind her left ear, with a tube running to a pump under her armpit.

  Darcy also made play with a death’s head puppet, a bleached monkey’s skull sewn on a glove of white. She had Enda, in a black dress printed with a skeleton, perform a dance of death with Berenice, in red silk, accompanied by Ida playing the fiddle with the unearthly grace and the hollow eyes of one who had sold her soul to the Devil.

  ‘Good evening to my seven queens.’ Mr Rainfleury arrived for dinner in the indulgent mood that meant he had something new to sell us. Sure enough, out it came. ‘And speaking of that, my queens must have their attendants. Settle down, my dears, for I have lovely news.’

  Having reddened the fire with the bellows, he consigned his bulk to his favourite armchair, his soft rolls settling in increments like goose feathers in a pillow. He announced, ‘I have engaged a professional hairdresser to put a little cultivation in your admirable animal growths.’

  ‘A little less of the animal from you, sir,’ growled Darcy in her most scalding tone. ‘And for the hairdressing we have Pertilly – who does not require to be paid extra.’

  ‘Our programme is intensifying,’ said Mr Rainfleury with the mild but unequivocal tranquillity of a folded blanket. ‘Remember, I have new activities planned for you – in department-store windows and lecture halls. We shall presently need your hair dressed twice a day, with suitable styles for morning and evening engagements.’

  ‘What’s wrong with our hair?’ Darcy’s brows knitted. ‘No one has ever complained about the hair.’

  ‘Except the Eileen O’Reilly,’ piped up Ida.

  ‘Even a flowered bower must be attended to,’ burbled Mr Rainfleury persuasively. ‘Art and craft are both employed in the garden, and upon the flowers themselves. And so art and craft must also attend the lady’s toilette table.’

  Ida stared at him. ‘We are getting a gardener, is it? For our hairs so?’

  ‘Imbecile!’ barked Darcy, so I knew she didn’t understand either.

  Mr Rainfleury laughed delicately. ‘Let me use language you will comprehend, my poppets. Hair in its natural state is like a raw potato or a plain boiled one. But hair may have aspirations. Hair may leave Nature and become Culture, may express Civilisation. Whenever we want the humble potato to be its best possible self, to be fit for a duchess’s table, we employ a chef to deal with it. And that chef will dignify and beautify the potato, creating such masterpieces as pommes de terre sautées, and pommes de terre dauphinoise and pommes de terre gratinées. Now Pertilly has a natural aptitude, to be sure, and her labours have served you well—’

  Pertilly’s face pinkened with happiness to find her work recognised for once.

  ‘But you need someone working in the back room, my dears, so that you can flourish better in the front room and on the stage. My candidate has studied at the leading hair academy in Holborn, London, where the students practise for months on wefts of hair glued to board until they are perfectly accomplished in every fashionable style. Tastefully arranged hair adds elegance and finish to the features of the human face. I’ll mention no specific names but there are faces in this room that might be glad and grateful for those things.’

  Pertilly frowned, understanding herself insulted. She looked to Berenice for defence, but Mr Rainfleury was still talking a torrent.

  ‘Moreover, my Miss Craughn – who has reached the elegance of middle age in her profession – has acquired the art of incorp­­­orating false hair invisibly into the natural growth. No!’ He held up his hand. ‘Sit down, Manticory. You ladies shall not object to resting your own hard-working hair in gentle nets and using hairpieces from a reputable source – and no, of course not every day, or often – only for some theatrical exigencies, of course. Yes, you too shall have your scalpettes and frisettes and single curls cunningly gummed to your foreheads; your torsades, your two-ended braids, all gardened and landscaped into your own hair so subtly that no one shall know what is home-grown and what is not.’

  ‘You mean,’ I asked slowly, ‘you want us to wear false hair, just when we are selling your dolls on the back of our supposedly natural hair?’

  Again, I received that look of unqualified dislike. ‘Of course you shall own it, Manticory, for you shall pay for the hair out of your dolls’ earnings. And the more hair you show, the more dolls you shall sell, and the more money you’ll get, and the more hair you can buy,’ he chortled. ‘Show some imagination, dear!’

  The Hairdressers’ Chronicle and Trade Journal, Pertilly’s favourite reading matter, lay open on a pertinent page. I seized it and waved it under Mr Rainfleury’s nose.

  ‘Hair you can buy! See this!’ I told Mr Rainfleury. ‘Black straight hair is these days imported via Marseilles from India, China and Japan. It says here that they boil it up in nitric acid to take out the black, which ruins the health of the poor hair-workers. And then they recolour it to fashionable reds and blonds with poisonous dyes! And frizzle it with tongs into curls, so it stinks—’

  ‘And even African hair comes into Marseilles.’ Darcy had read the article too. She spluttered, ‘And its wool can be disguised. You ask us to put that on our heads?’

  ‘Oh no!’ flourished Mr Rainfleury. ‘Far from it! How many times must I say it? It is not human hair I ask you to nestle among your own. It is my own invention, hygienic and safe. For my sweet poppets, nothing but silk and rare-plant extracts. It’s that naughty Manticory feeding your heads with nonsense again – the Hairdressers’ Chronicle is bound to tell lies about hair; they make money out of sensation.’ He dropped his voice to a wheedling tone. ‘Miss Craughn brings with her a treasure chest of tortoiseshell combs, amber pins and diamanté combs. Why, she even has a portable nitting machine to deal with your own little . . .’

  Seeing our blanched faces, he stopped tactfully.

  Was it my own Enda, I wondered, or was it Berenice who had confided to him that the lice still sometimes made themselves at home on us, even in Dublin?

  Mr Rainfleury had not puffed the hairdresser beyond her abilities. Miss Craughn was a true professional, who gave per­­­­formances in her own right. She made a theatre out of the sewing room where she c
onducted her business with the tongs and frisettes, her crimping irons. We all assembled to watch her whenever we could, relishing the chance to be part of a hair audience for once. Small, mouse-haired and with a tight little mouth, she sat on a stool to work on us. Miss Craughn loved our hair – she acted as if it were hers and not ours. She insisted upon it being just so. But the desiccated little lady wished no intimacies with us Swineys, quietly giving it to be understood that she had worked with better blood and breeding than ours. I overheard her exclaiming to Mrs Hartigan, ‘To think a grand house like this would hear native accents like the ones on those girls in its very dining room! And that Darcy creature makes it the home of all the profanity in Ireland.’

  While she worked on our heads, Miss Craughn spoke only to herself, muttering about necessary pins and technicalities of combs and lotions with terrifying names. I liked the prissy woman’s skills well enough, but I never accustomed myself to the smells of the liquids she painted on my scalp. And I hated the false hair, for I never stopped picturing the girls obliged to be shorn so that I, already luxuriating in hair, might greedily have yet more. In fact, the more Mr Rainfleury spoke of his silk curls, the less I believed in him.

  Miss Craughn very promptly found her way into Darcy’s black books. In front of the hairdresser, Darcy assumed her most lordly airs. She gave peremptory orders for her own styling. Miss Craughn ignored both the order and the tone. Darcy did not scruple to administer a slap or a curse to a recalcitrant sister in Miss Craughn’s presence, until she found that the hairdresser faithfully informed Mr Rainfleury of every act of violence.

  A month after the hairdresser arrived, Ida was alone in the sewing room with Miss Craughn after the latter had exchanged some bitter words with Darcy. Poor Ida took the brunt of it. The hairdresser brushed her frustrations into her scalp, knotted her anger into curling rags and roasted her impotence with hot tongs. Finally, Miss Craughn’s comb made a too-swift and merciless progress though Ida’s curls. Ida lost the run of herself and threw a fit. She turned her head and bit Miss Craughn’s hand.