Tattycoram

by Audrey Thomas

  “I love you, Hattie,” she said as she was leaving. “We all love you. Never doubt it for one minute.”

  All my bravado vanished and I threw myself into her arms and wept.

  Grandfather was dead; I would never see him again in this life.

  “Why, Harriet, you’re crying,” said Nurse. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Leave her alone,” said Amy. “Have you no heart?”

  I have not mentioned boys. We saw them, of course, on Sundays, at choir practice and at their end of the playground, but we were not supposed to speak to them. They ate in a separate dining hall and slept in a different wing. Boys grew up to be men and men had got our mothers into trouble. When Matron talked to us about such things, she was very severe. Kind as she was, I believe that in her heart she thought that, given our origins, we had a natural tendency to stray from the beaten path. Thus it was up to her, now that we were becoming women, to strike the fear of men into our hearts. We would have a harder time than most, she hinted, and must always be on guard. Once we left the hospital and were engaged as domestic servants, we would have days off, or at least half-days off, and we should be planning ahead what we would do with such idleness. We must never talk to strangers, we must walk briskly, backs straight, eyes straight ahead. It would help to carry a Bible.

  Never touch spirits or go to coffee rooms. Beware of soldiers, especially officers. And sometimes the master of the house, or one of the elder sons . . . Her voice trailed away, but her face spoke clearly.

  “I expect I shall sleep on my time off,” Amy said.

  “It’s all so ridiculous,” Caroline said. “Look at us. Why would anyone give us a second glance?”

  “We won’t always be wearing these awful brown uniforms.”

  “No, we’ll be wearing awful black ones instead.”

  “Unless we marry,” Phoebe said.

  “And who are we to marry? Do you want to marry the bootboy or the groom? Servants marry servants, that’s the way of the world.”

  We were all so depressed by this fact that we went straight to sleep.

  Older girls and boys left to serve their apprenticeships; the babies kept arriving. We sewed little nightgowns and wondered if we would ever have children of our own. Meanwhile, we learned everything it would be useful for a servant in a small family to know. We scrubbed and blacked stoves and grates and learned how to lay a good fire and how to scatter tea leaves on carpets to keep them fresh. How to turn sheets and make a French seam down the middle. How to prepare nursery food in case we ever rose to positions as nursery nurses. Which soothing syrups were safe for Baby and which weren’t. Above all, how to do all these things quickly and quietly, not raising dust or clattering up and down stairs like an Irish slattern.

  “We are proud of the reputation of our Foundling girls and boys,” Matron said. (“Hattie, you have blacking on your nose, that won’t do.”) “You must strive to live up to that reputation.”

  The blind girl had gone; Mr. Standfast had come up with a solution; he married her. She was never allowed to sing in the chapel again, but she was safe. We imagined them giving small concert parties where people would come to marvel at her voice, or we imagined them practising duets together, their voices blending perfectly. We never imagined them kissing.

  Our domestic lessons continued. We carried heavy cans of water up and down the back stairs, heavy trays of crockery. Matron taught us a little bobbing curtsy and how to snuff a candle without letting it smoke. “Always use the candle snuffer, girls, do not lick your fingers and snuff the candle that way.”

  And one day, Mr. Brownlow called me down to the court room. There was a gentleman with him, quite a young man, shortish, with a bright embroidered waistcoat under his coat.

  “Harriet,” Mr. Brownlow said, “do you know who this man is?”

  The other gentleman smiled at me; my heart began to gallop.

  “My father, sir?”

  After a moment the other one threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “Oh Lor’,” he said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. “Oh my.”

  I hung my head; I hated being laughed at. Even Mr. Brownlow was laughing.

  “No, no, child, this is Mr. Dickens. He has come to engage you as a servant. He is a regular attendant at chapel on Sunday and takes a keen interest in all that goes on here. I think you could not ask for a better placement.”

  For a moment I felt like that boy Jeremiah Brown must have felt. I didn’t want to leave the known, however detested, for the mysterious unknown. But I had no choice, of course. It wasn’t a case of cornet over unknown mother.

  When I raised my eyes to the strange man’s face, he was smiling at me so kindly that I forgave him at once for laughing and returned his smile.

  “My wife,” he said, “has not been well these past months, which is why I am here instead of Mrs. Dickens. However, day to day, you will be responsible to her. We have one child, the prettiest boy in all England, and there will be another child in the autumn. Your role will be that of housemaid, with some duties in the nursery. My wife is a sweet, gentle woman, but not strong. Are you strong, Harriet?”

  I thought of the practice with the heavy cans of water, the trays of crocks, up the stairs and down, up the stairs and down. I reckoned I was stronger than he was, even allowing for the fact that he was a man, but of course I didn’t say so.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And of an even temper? Not given to hysterics?”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir.”

  “Then I think you will do very well.”

  Mr. Brownlow nodded and smiled. “Excellent. Excellent. And,” he added, “Harriet is famous for her needlework.”

  Mr. Dickens did not seem very interested in my needlework.

  I was taken away by Matron and given a small parcel containing two new frocks, two nightgowns, two shifts, a bonnet, a cloak and a new pair of shoes. I took off my uniform, apron and cap and put on one of the frocks. The rest of my clothes were packed in a small trunk, along with some examples of my fancywork and, of all things, the little handkerchief baby that had been taken away from me so long ago. The sewing mistress left her class to come and press into my hands a beautiful ivory shuttle and some new instruction booklets on tatting and crochet.

  “Come and see me next year, Hattie, and write and tell me how you are getting on.”

  I felt quite sorry for her at that moment, stuck at the Foundling until she died. Whatever fate awaited me, it had to be better than that.

  One last look at my iron bed, at the rows of iron beds and the high, barred windows, and then the ward was locked again. Who would sleep in my bed tonight? Would I be missed?

  I was not allowed to say goodbye to my friends but went back downstairs with Matron, who said she would arrange for the carting of my trunk. It was so small and contained so little I felt I could carry it myself, but that would not have been seemly.

  “Are we ready then?” my employer said.

  “There is just one thing more, a formality we must go through with all our children as they leave to go out in the world.”

  The formality consisted of a short sermon Mr. Brownlow read out to me, how I must always be a credit to the Hospital and so on, but I must confess I did not pay much attention, so anxious was I to be gone. Then I was given a handshake and the gift of a Holy Bible and Book of Common Prayer, and, that done, Mr. Dickens and I walked out the main door and across the grounds. Through the open window I could hear the Infant School saying their times tables: “Two twos is four, three twos is six, four twos is eight . . .” The porter opened the great gates, and for the first time in my life I stepped out onto a London street.

  “We should walk,” said my new employer. He smiled at me; I was nearly as tall as he was. “Are you surprised there is no carriage?”

  I nodded; I was surprised.

  “Well, my house is a mere stone’s throw away from here, so we shall walk. It will take no more than five
minutes.”

  I hid my disappointment. I was hoping to go far away, to another part of London altogether, and here I was to be right around the corner! But at least I was out. I took great gulps of air, dizzy with the thought.

  “Do you like to walk, Harriet?”

  “I don’t really know, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We girls did not go outside the grounds, sir, but I expect I shall like walking very much.”

  “I walk every day,” he said. “London is a capital city for walking. There is so much to see.”

  A few yards down Guildford Street we turned right into a small street with a gate across it. A very fat boy dressed in a dark red uniform came out of the lodge to let us in. He stared at me hard and then winked.

  “I chose this street because it is so very quiet,” Mr. Dickens said. “No vans rattling up and down and so forth. I need absolute quiet for my work.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, although I had no idea what he was talking about. Oh well, I knew how to be quiet; I had had much training in that.

  A few houses up, on the left, he stopped in front of a green door, set back a few feet from the street. He took out a key and motioned me forward.

  “And this,” he said, with an elaborate gesture, “is me ’umble ’ome” — he paused — “and now yours.”

  We entered a narrow hallway, where he placed his hat on a hall tree and went to the foot of the stairs.

  “Kate,” he bellowed, “she’s here!”

  4

  I was never a servant but in that one household, so I can’t really say what it was like elsewhere, but through talking to other servants, it seems to me that the Dickens household was very different, chiefly because of Mr. Dickens, who was unlike any man I have met before or since. For one thing, he shut himself up in his study half the day, writing books. I suppose I knew that real people wrote books — weren’t Matthew, Mark, Luke and John real people? wasn’t John Bunyan? — but I assumed they were all dead. It seemed such a queer occupation for a man, to sit by himself for hours, making things up. And to get paid — paid handsomely — for what amounted to daydreaming. Nobody else thought it strange, quite the opposite in fact, and the house catered to his peculiar obsession. He was never to be disturbed when he was writing, and we must all go about on tiptoe. Once Mr. Dickens heard me singing as I was hanging up clothes in the garden (his study was at the back). Suddenly a window flew open and he shouted down at me, “Beware of blackbirds! Stop that racket!” I was so startled, I dropped the sheet and had to rinse it all over again.

  But once he had finished work for the day, he was a different man, noisy, full of fun, bellowing and teasing or presiding at dinners where the sauce was always laughter. He could imitate just about anyone: soldiers, sailors, barrow men, the Prime Minister even. He loved to pretend he was a drunken district commissioner in some far-off place, India or Africa, giving the toast to the Queen or to Absent Friends, mixing up his words and finally sliding under the table. When I was asked to help Cook serve and remove, I had a terrible time to keep from laughing.

  He loved practical jokes. One day he came to the back door dressed as an old Jew, in a long, dirty overcoat and with a long, straggly beard. I recognized him at once, but he gave me a look, and so I kept quiet while Cook chased him away with her rolling pin, shouting she’d “old rag” him, and how in mercy’s name did he get past the gate at the end of the road? Oh, it was so comical; I had a pain in my side from laughing so hard.

  When Cook found out that she had been hoodwinked, she was not pleased and threatened to give in her notice. I decided it would be wise not to mention that I had seen through the disguise (his eyes gave him away, squint though he would), but it did bring home to me, yet again, how our dress defines us. At the hospital we were more than four hundred separate young souls, with hair in every range of colour and eyes of every hue. Yet to the fashionable ladies who came to see us on Sundays, we were just “boy foundling” or “girl foundling.” That was our identity.

  And the fat young man who guarded the gate into Guildford Street loved to whisper to me, “Orfink, Orfink, oh yes, we knows you!” every time I passed in or out. He knew I had come from the hospital; he knew I would always wear that uniform, whatever my clothing. He had a fat sister who brought him his dinner from the public house in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Mr. Dickens enjoyed talking to him. “I declare, that boy sweats gravy!” he said, and — I did not understand this at the time — “I conjure them up and then, by God, they appear in real life! I must be more careful.”

  The house in Doughty Street consisted of four floors, the household of eight persons: Mr. and Mrs. Dickens; Mr. Dickens’s younger brother Fred; the Dickens’s little boy Charley, who was not yet eight months old; Cook; the nursemaid, who left about a month after I arrived; William, the groom, who lived over the stables in Doughty Mews; and myself. Cook was uneven in temper and liked port, the nursemaid gave herself airs, and William I rarely saw except when he brought a horse round for Mr. Dickens to go out riding to Richmond with one of his friends. When I went there first, I slept with Cook in a little closet off the kitchen, but later, after the nursemaid left — dismissed for having a follower — I slept in a garret room across from Fred and next to the nursery and, until the next baby came, more or less took over the care of Charley, as well as doing my regular tasks. This was the first time in my life I had ever slept in a room alone, and in the beginning it unnerved me. I felt like the only chick in a nest, and I even missed Cook’s snores. But gradually I came to look forward to retreating to my little room at the end of a long day, and when I couldn’t sleep — I learned that one can be too tired to sleep — I opened my window, which looked down on to Doughty Street, and leaned on the sill, listening to the faraway roar of those parts of the city which never really slept, or not until the last hours of the night, and heard the chimes of St. Paul’s: one o’clock, dong; two o’clock, dong dong; and the halves and quarters in between. Sometimes I wondered if Jonnie were out there somewhere, listening as well, or whether Sam in Australia ever looked up at the moon that looked down upon us all.

  There had been a sister of Mrs. Dickens — Mary — who had died suddenly in May. Cook said that it was a terrible tragedy because everyone loved her and she was just seventeen. Mr. Dickens wore her ring on his little finger. Her sister’s death on top of her advancing pregnancy seemed to make Mrs. Dickens somewhat melancholy. Often, when I took Charley down to her after his nap, I could see that she had been crying. She was always very kind to me, and I was truly sorry when I heard later what had happened to her.

  She brightened when Mr. Dickens came into the room — we all did. He was such a whirlwind of energy and liveliness it was hard not to smile when he was downstairs. And he bestowed funny nicknames on everyone — he called baby Charley “Flasher Phoby,” I don’t know why. But he could be very strict. He had a place for everything and could not bear disorder. Mrs. Dickens told me that even when he travelled, he would rearrange his rooms until they suited him. She said he had such charm the landladies never objected.

  Various relations came to dinner, but with one exception I didn’t know any of them well enough to form an opinion. Cook said Mr. Dickens’s father was a trial and he expected too much from his son, but then, she said, now that he was famous, the whole world had its hand in his pocket.

  “Is he very famous, Cook?”

  “Oh Lord, yes, and gettin’ famouser by the minute. And him such a young man, too, not yet thirty.”

  On Sunday Mr. Dickens went to chapel at the Foundling; Mrs. Dickens accompanied him if she felt well enough. One day he invited me to go, for Mr. Brownlow had told him I liked music and sang in the choir. I thanked him but told him no. I had no desire to go back through those iron gates until the obligatory visit the next Whitsuntide.

  “I am concerned about your spiritual health, Harriet.” I felt that he was teasing me.

  “I read my Bible, sir, and I say my prayers.”
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  “Wouldn’t you like to go for the music?”

  “No, sir.” (Even so, it was the one thing about the place I missed, and I often sang quietly to Charley or to myself when I was in my room.)

  On my half-day I put on my new bonnet and shawl and went out of Doughty Street and into the wide world, the fat boy in his ridiculous livery whispering, “Oh yes, we knows you,” from where he sat on his stool. I always walked on the other side of the street as I passed the hospital and headed for Southampton Row. I did not dawdle, but I observed everything — the multitudes of men and women hurrying along, going from somewhere to somewhere else, the carriages of the fashionable ladies, the nursemaids in Russell Square chatting to one another as their precious charges ran about on the paths, the hawkers of fruit and vegetables, of oysters and pies. The boardmen along Tottenham Court Road advertising chop houses, plays, patent medicine. Once I even saw a procession of huge portmanteaux and boxes proceeding down Oxford Street, followed by a group of laughing boys. I thought for a minute I had lost my senses, but it was really a parade of men with only heads and legs sticking out, advertising a trunk maker. The boys were abusing them, shouting at them and shoving, trying to knock them over. The sight was comical in the extreme, but the boardmen did not look happy; I never saw one that did. They could not stand still, like the costermongers or flower sellers, but had to be forever on the move.

  Always I looked for Jonnie; I felt sure I should recognize him if I saw him, even after all this time.

  Sometimes men spoke to me, but something in my manner must have dissuaded them from following.

  There were many beggars, often dressed in bits of soldiers’ apparel, but Cook told me she’d eat a fish head if any of them had done service anywhere but in a pub.

  I walked miles and miles, sometimes as far as Kensington Gardens, sometimes down to the river, always listening for the church bells so I would not be late returning home. I never went to the very poor areas around Seven Dials; Mrs. Dickens had warned me that no girl should enter such places alone.