It was the vicar at the new church of St. Stephen who saved the day. Because of some distant connection with Miss BurdettCoutts, he knew about the home and asked if he could call. Somehow the subject got around to the need for kneelers and the lack of skill among his female parishioners. He did not have the funds to send out for them and yet he dearly wanted his church to look as well turned-out, as he put it, as the other churches in Shepherd’s Bush.
We told him about Elisabeth, called her in, and he commissioned her on the spot. It would have to be a labour of love, he explained, with very little money attached to it, but if she were willing he would be delighted. She bowed her head and put on her most humble manner, used words like “unworthy” and “high honour” and so on, but of course she agreed to do it. Her designs would be submitted to the vicar, and, he said, he had a few ideas of his own. If she would think about hers, he would think about his, and he would come back for a consultation within the week.
Mr. Dickens thought it was an excellent idea.
Right from the beginning the undertaking went very well. Matron and I asked Elisabeth to choose other girls as helpers. At first she refused, insisting she could manage all the work by herself, but we said no, it was too much for any one person, and she would not be excused from her regular lessons and chores. She could direct the work and do the most difficult designs, she would choose the colours (the kneelers were to be done in crewel work), but others would help with backgrounds and the simpler stitches.
The project was soon underway. Matron and Mr. Dickens went off with a list of supplies to be purchased, and one large chest of drawers was turned over to the kneelers. Some of the designs were quite simple, working off the theme of Shepherd’s Bush, with lambs and shepherds’ crooks; others were more elaborate. The most astonishing, worked entirely by Elisabeth herself, were the four Evangelists: Matthew as the Angel, Mark with the Lion, Luke with the Ox and John with the Eagle. In brilliant reds, blues and greens, the designs throbbed with colour, unlike anything I had ever seen. The vicar called Elisabeth a true artist, and even girls who thought she was too uppity to be bothered with told her her saints were “smashin’.” The only one that caused any of us discomfort was the figure of St. Stephen himself in his agony. The figures of the Jews were almost caricatures, and the saint bled copiously where the stones had broken his flesh. The vicar suggested that perhaps it inclined too much in the Roman direction, bleeding Christs and so forth. Mr. Dickens and Miss Burdett-Coutts, who had come to admire the finished work, tended to agree, but they left it up to the vicar to decide what to do.
“Amazing,” Mr. Dickens said to Matron and me later, “that all that self-tormenting, all that anger, could be translated into such beauty. Miss Burdett-Coutts suggested to me that she write to the Bishop of Adelaide to see if they can make a special effort to find her suitable employment once she’s out there. We think she would be wasted as a domestic.”
“Could she not stay in England?”
“We considered that, but no. The whole idea behind Urania Cottage is that these girls are to be given a chance at a new life somewhere else. Even singling her out for special attention is bending the rules. However, it is up to the Bishop; he can treat her the same as the others if he so wishes.”
When all the kneelers had been attached to their boards and installed in the church, the vicar invited us to a private service of thanksgiving. Mr. Dickens and Miss Burdett-Coutts attended, and Mr. Hullah, who had been hired to teach singing. Afterwards we took tea in the vicarage with the vicar and his wife and their two daughters. Elisabeth barely uttered a word, even though she was really the guest of honour. She refused cake and sat by herself on the very edge of her chair. The more she was praised, the more she seemed to shrink. When we returned home, she went immediately to her room, pleading a headache.
Matron was very worried, but one of the girls hit upon the real reason for this behaviour: “Betsey’s sweet on the Vicar. She didn’t know he was married.” True or not, Elisabeth soon slipped back into her old, dour ways.
The episode was forgotten in the great scandal of the following month: three girls, led by Jemima Hiscock — always a difficult, argumentative girl, she would never earn her £2 for good marks — broke down the door of our beer-cellar and drank themselves silly. It was past bedtime when they crept downstairs and did this, so the rest of us awakened from sleep to a great hullabaloo of shouting, cursing and hysterical laughter. Mrs. Morton told me to dress quickly and run for the gardener, who slept in his quarters at the back of the property.
Commanding the rest of the girls to return to their rooms or lose marks for bad behaviour — for of course they came rushing out to see what was happening — Matron, the gardener and I got the miscreants to bed, not without struggles, curses and kicks. We locked them in and sent for Mr. Dickens in the morning. He dismissed them immediately, after the usual tearful scenes and vows of repentance.
Mr. Dickens always seemed terribly depressed when things like this happened, as though he were personally responsible. I suppose, because he considered himself an excellent judge of character, he did take the blow personally.
“Well,” said Mavis Benson, “there’s three what won’t see the Southern Cross.”
10
In 1851, the Great Exhibition opened at the Crystal Palace. Mr. Dickens was on some committee to do with it but resigned because he felt the common labourer would not be fairly represented. He was quite cross and somewhat cynical about the whole affair. Why not have a companion exhibition, he said: “England’s Sins and Negligences: Crime, Disease and Poverty.” He did attend, however, more than once, but found there was too much to look at; each time he came away with a headache. And months before the exhibition opened, he began receiving letters from people who were coming to London and would like to meet him.
“At the risk of turning into a Great Exhibition myself,” he told us, “I have let the house and sent the family down to Broadstairs, where I shall join them later. Meanwhile I am hiding out at the office of Household Words.”
In spite of his negative attitude, it was a fact that the whole world was talking about the wonders of the Crystal Palace. Matron wrote to Miss Burdett-Coutts, via Mr. Dickens (for we knew he made all the decisions), and asked if it would be possible for the inhabitants of Urania Cottage to attend when the entrance fee went down in July. The answer was yes. Matron and I and the “five best-behaved girls” would be allowed to attend. “If we are to send them out into the Great Beyond, perhaps it is as well to let them have a taste of it now. But the crowds will be fierce — you must not let them become separated from you. And do not inform them now that only the five best will be chosen or they will all put in extra effort for the wrong reasons. Just look at the marks sheets for the previous fortnight and select the girls with the highest marks.”
When the time came, we did this, not without loud grumbling from the other seven, who were placated only by the possibility of an expedition later on if they behaved well now. Bribery, yes, but bribery seemed preferable to facing outright mutiny. Mr. Dickens offered to take charge personally at the cottage that day.
We took an omnibus down to the park, paid our shillings and went inside. After the quiet of Urania Cottage, the noise, at first, was almost overwhelming, and the girls appeared stunned, unable to move forward into the Great Hall. However, that passed soon enough, and we had all we could do to keep track of them as they rushed from one exhibit to the next.
I think the favourites were the stuffed elephant with the howdah on its back (“fancy ridin’ around in one o’ them things!”) and the hydro-incubator with its hundreds of baby chicks milling about and piping. When I steered them towards the Australian, South African and Canadian exhibits, they expressed great interest in the clever kangaroo, who carried her baby in a pouch, and in snowshoes and sleighs, an elephant’s foot made into an umbrella stand, a sheepskin rug. We all laughed at an American bed which, at a set time, tipped the sleeper out of bed and into
a cold bath.
On the whole I thought the girls behaved themselves very well. May Corbett whispered to me (with a quick nod of her head) that the man “over there” was a pickpocket she had known in the old days. She insisted we inform a policeman, who said he would keep an eye on him. Annie Clapp said her feet were killin’ her and she had a mind to take her shoes off and stick her feet in the fountain. Fortunately the laughter of her companions put an end to that idea. “I weren’t really goin’ to do it, I were only thinkin’ how nice it would feel.” We each had a saveloy and a bun and, later on, a flavoured ice, all paid for by Mr. Dickens, who said a day without treats was not a true day out.
The girls looked down their noses at the country people, wearing rosettes and led by serious-looking clergymen, and the crowds of charity children, whose entrance fees, a notice informed us, had been paid by “wealthy philanthropists who wish to remain anonymous.” No doubt Mr. Dickens was one of those wealthy philanthropists. Just as we were leaving, I saw a group of boys in the uniform of the Foundling Hospital. They looked so quaint, many people were staring at them and pointing. I wondered if the girls would be allowed to come. Thank heavens our girls, in their varicoloured dresses, could have been a group of working-class young women from anywhere.
Back at the house our five best girls turned into our five worst girls, alternating bragging about all they had seen with sulks and mutterings about the dullness of cottage life. Worse than that, the very next night two of those girls tried to run away by pulling off the palings at one side of the garden. The gardener heard them and brought them back, and they were let off with a warning.
“What do you think,” said Mr. Dickens, “of a very big dog in a barrel, at the side which leads on to the street? We would always know, then, if somebody were trying to get out — or in.” The idea was never taken up — a big dog in a barrel? — and, in fact, we did not see him for a while. He was finishing a book, and his ninth child, a little girl, died very suddenly. Mrs. Dickens was away taking a cure, and he had to summon her home. My foster mother’s babies, the ones who slept under the little green mounds in the Shere churchyard, never lived more than a fortnight. Dora was almost a year old; how horrible that must have been for them all. Mother told me once that you accept it — “The back is made for its burthen” — but you never get over it.
In a way I didn’t blame the girls who tried to break out. They had had a taste of freedom, a taste of London, and returning to Urania Cottage must have seemed almost like a return to prison. The gardener said he was sure he had heard men’s voices mixed with the girls’, but they swore this wasn’t so, and Mr. Dickens chose to believe them. I couldn’t help wondering if they hadn’t found a way to contact old friends while examining the delights of the exhibition.
I too was feeling restless, and I thought once again of trying to emigrate. I was sure Miss Burdett-Coutts would help me and might even aid me in making inquiries about Sam. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Perhaps I could chaperone the next lot who were going out. I hated the idea of being a servant again, but it might not be so bad in a new country where everyone — or almost everyone — had to start from scratch. Or perhaps I could teach, why not? I became quite excited by the idea, imagined myself in a little one-room schoolhouse in the bush, kangaroos hopping past the windows as I taught the times tables to the children of convicts and officers.
I soon became obsessed with this idea, and on my days off I walked farther and farther afield, talking to myself as I weighed the pros and cons. I had made up my mind to speak to Mr.Dickens about it before the year was out, when one day I found myself by the bird market near Covent Garden. When Urania Cottage had first opened, Matron had a little canary in a cage, and the girls were all very fond of it until it died. Ori was an older cat now, no longer so playful. All he wanted to do was lie in the sunniest window and doze, occasionally opening one green eye to look out. Why not buy another canary for the home?
As soon as it became obvious that I was a potential customer, boys and men surrounded me, all claiming to have the most marvellous singers, the best lookers, the finest this and the finest that. (“A pair of lovebirds, Missus, now wouldn’t that be a treat?” “A thrush, Miss, the children loves a thrush, there’s no greater singin’ bird in England than a throstle.” “A singing lark?” “A goldfinch, Missus? A goldfinch is long-lived, will pair with a canary, he’s fancied by the ladies.”) They thrust the cages at me, all shouting at once.
And then I saw him, at the back of the crowd! I wasn’t sure at first; it had been twenty-four years since I had seen him last, almost twenty-three since Sam had called out to him to run. When he looked at me and smiled, I was sure of it. I pushed my way through to him and touched his arm.
“Jonnie?” I said. He drew away quickly, shaking his head.
“Me name’s Archie,” he said, and turned from me.
“It’s all right,” I said softly, touching his arm again gently. “It’s me, Harriet.”
And still he looked puzzled.
“Hattie,” I said, “it’s Hattie.”
The other sellers dropped away, not without comment — “Is she yer bird, then, Archie?” “Is she yer sweetheart?” — but he ignored them. Setting the cage down carefully, he said, “Hattie, is it really you?”
“It really is.”
We fell into one another’s arms.
Mr. Dickens was horrified.
“You really want to do this, Harriet? Go and live in St. Luke’s in some run-down hovel in a street of rundown hovels just to be with this long-lost foster brother of yours?”
“He’s family, sir, all the family I’ve got.”
“But Lord, woman, his life has been so very different from yours! His has been a life of the streets, a rough, hand-to-mouth existence. I know, I’ve talked to many birdhawkers. You will eat coarse bread and drink weak tea and count yourself lucky if you see meat once a week. You are above all this; you are practically a lady.”
“I’m a Foundling, sir. Jonnie was my childhood playmate, the constant companion of my early years. It broke my mother’s heart when Sam was transported and Jonnie fled. Now that he’s found, she’d want me to care for him in any way I can. What I am hoping is that, perhaps in a year or two, once we have become reacquainted with one another, we might be able to emigrate. I had been thinking along the lines of emigration when I met him.”
“Why isn’t he married, with his own woman to look after him?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him. What I do know is that he has had a hard and lonely time, always fearing that someday a policeman’s hand would fall heavily on his shoulder. And he blames himself that Sam got caught. Sam hadn’t wanted to take him along that night, but Jonnie carried on until Sam relented, and he says Sam was paying too much attention to him and not enough to where he was walking.”
“Sam shouldn’t have been poaching.”
“I know, sir, but times were hard. Our parents didn’t like it, but many boys did it, men as well. With Sam it was only rabbits at first, Jonnie says, he never took the game birds until just before he was caught.”
“Jonnie says. Well, I can’t stop you, of course, but I think you are making a mistake. You have worked hard to get where you are. One should always move forward, never backward.”
“Forward to what, sir?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. Don’t you want to marry one day soon and raise a family, have a home of your own?”
“I am twenty-nine years old; I suspect that future is not open to me.”
“Don’t be so sure — a handsome, intelligent woman like yourself. Many men would be proud to have you for a wife. I think your emigration idea was an excellent one, but on your own, unencumbered by your foster brother. Miss BurdettCoutts and I can help you. A new country, eh? A new start?”
“Not without my brother, sir, and not right away.”
“Oh very well. You have always been a stubborn miss. Go and live amongst the bird-droppings and bad l
anguage. But promise me you will leave your money in the savings bank for now and that you will let us know if you change your mind.”
“Yes, sir.”
He sighed. “You always seem to be leaving me, Harriet, but no doubt we shall meet again. And by the way — I thought you weren’t fond of birds.”
“Only ravens, sir.”
And so once again I packed up my little trunk and set out on a new adventure. It was hard to leave Urania Cottage. Whatever I had originally thought about the experiment, most of the girls had lasted out their year and emigrated successfully. A few had even married. I was proud to have played a part in its success.
Ori I left behind. He was happy at the cottage and, even at his age, I did not think he would be welcome in the bird-hawkers’ world.
“I usually goes alone,” he said, “because this job wants utter silence, Hat. Once we sets the nets, you keep mum, understand?”
We had risen before daybreak, the nets and all our apparatus in a large basket Jonnie wore on his back. I held the callbird in a covered cage. We had walked miles before he nodded to me and said, looking across to a far field with some trees beyond, “That will do nicely.” We stopped to share some bread and cheese and ale, then set off to erect the great net which would ensnare the birds. When all was ready, Jonnie told me to place the callbird carefully in the centre.
“Now,” Jonnie whispered, “now we wait.”
We withdrew to a safe distance away, about thirty yards, and lay flat on our bellies, with a piece of canvas under us to keep off the damp. Side by side, not speaking, hardly breathing.
My previous life, all my previous lives, seemed to have fallen away from me like the shed skins of a snake. I had always been living with my foster brother in a little two-room dwelling — it would be wrong to glorify it with the name of house — sharing it with a crippled man who made cages. I had always slept on a flock bed and awakened to a bedlam of birdsong. I had always sat on the stoop of an evening, trying to read a little while Jonnie/Archie went off for a pint with his mates. I had always drawn water at a common standpipe; I had never felt completely clean. None of this mattered because here I was with my long-lost brother, lying beside him, waiting for dawn. On a sudden impulse I reached over and touched his hand; he turned to me and whispered, “This is the life, ain’t it?”
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