Abigail

by Malcolm Macdonald

  “I don’t know the East End these days, me old love,” she said. “Time was when Whitechapel was all Scotch and Irish; now it’s all Jews. Everything’s changed. It’s still poor, but it’s changed. I can’t help you, gel.”

  “Where was the poorest area—that can’t have changed. The toughest, roughest part?”

  Annie laughed at this show of spirit. “They pulled it down—what didn’t fall of its own accord. All round Liverpool Street station—my area. But you could try Shadwell or Wapping. Or up Hackney way. Just stick a pin in the map, love—there’s a thousand miles of poverty over there. What you going to call these places of yours?”

  “We haven’t decided. I want to call them Bouvier Clinics, but that depends on Victor.”

  Annie tested the word and began to laugh. Abigail asked why. “You got to think how they’ll say it, love. None of your Boo-vee-eh. Bovveryer! That’s what they’ll say. Bovver-yer!”

  “Meaning ‘bother you.’ Oh, dear!”

  “No,” Annie laughed. “You still don’t get it. Like, a woman’ll say, ‘Does your old man bovver yer much?’ or ‘Her old man’s a right caterwauler—he bovvers her every bleeding night.’ See! The Bovver-yer Clinic. That’ll catch on fast.”

  “Well, that puts an end to that.”

  “No!” Annie was vehement. “It’s perfect. They’ll all have a good laugh. And who isn’t fond of a good laugh, eh! Only I don’t like that ‘Clinic’—there’s a mortal fear of doctors and hospitals and messing about with your insides down in those streets.”

  Abigail blessed the instinct that had led her to start with Annie. “What would be a better name?”

  “I dunno. Words isn’t my lark. What’s a place where everyone goes? Palais? Emporium? Club?”

  “Institute?”

  “Yes! That’ll do. Like, there’s working men’s institutes, evening institutes, polytechnic institutes—why not a bovver-yer institute!” She cackled richly at the comedy of it.

  Abigail did not find it quite so funny. “The Bouvier Institute for Healthy Girls. What about that? It should remove all doubts.”

  ***

  “Not ‘Girls,’” Dr. Stubbins said, clenching her gloved hands even more firmly together. “‘Wives.’ The Bouvier Institute for Healthy Wives. I couldn’t consent to treat unmarried females with Malthusian devices.”

  “Not treat, Dr. Stubbins,” Abigail said. “Advise. Perhaps you aren’t aware of the scourge of illegitimacy? Some even consider it to be worse than the scourge of indiscriminate breeding within marriage.”

  “It may be, Baroness,” the doctor said primly. “Indeed, I believe it is. But I cannot regard its cure as falling within the medical sphere. If you wish to deal with illegitimacy as well, then the Institute should employ a minister of religion. As I see it, my task—on the Malthusian side—is to assist married people to ascend from the trap of excessive childbearing and the resultant poverty and infant and maternal mortality. I’m quite prepared to treat unmarried females who have medical complaints and on separate premises. But I wouldn’t want confusion to enter anybody’s mind on this matter.”

  Abigail drew a sharp breath but Victor laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Dr. Stubbins has made an excellent point,” he said. “We must obviously discuss this further. Meanwhile, I suggest we try to decide on one of the three buildings available to us.”

  Abigail pinched her lips together; the rims of her nostrils went white, but she did as Victor suggested.

  “This woman, Dr. Stubbins,” Victor said later, “is our barometer. She’s a Modern, a Progressive.”

  “She’s a bigot,” Abigail complained.

  “Yes—a modern, progressive bigot. If she’s for something, you may be sure it’s on the very fringe of what society and the law will permit; but if she’s against…” He mimed a policeman putting handcuffs on her wrists.

  “I’m not afraid of a fight.”

  “Ah, yes! A fight—what a lovely word! What a Daniel word! Fight…smash…crush. He used them like small change. Shall we, instead, talk about a means to victory? We are interested in victories, aren’t we? Not in mere fighting?”

  Warily she nodded.

  “I say make haste slowly. Let Dr. Stubbins treat only the ladies with the marriage lines. The first thing she’s going to find is that a lot of them don’t have marriage lines—yet in every other way they are respectable ‘married’ women; sober, faithful, excellent mothers and housekeepers. The good doctor won’t be the first missionary to adapt high-flown ideals to uncomfortable local ways. I’m thinking that’ll be the crack in her façade. But even more than all this, we mustn’t forget that the local police will be watching us like cat and mouse. When they see we are absolutely firm in treating only married women, and when they see what an impeccably moral person our doctor is, they’ll think twice about taking action against us. But if we began to give advice and safeguards to unmarried women…”

  “But we must, Victor. At some stage we must—that’s the whole point.”

  He held up a finger. “How can we do that without a fight? Smash nothing? Crush no one? Eh? How can we get even the police to say, ‘Yes, that’s all right, too?’”

  She laughed grimly, thinking these questions to be rhetorical.

  But he went on. “What’s the English saying? ‘Hard cases make bad law’? No one likes to administer or enforce bad law. Not even the toughest of your English police. So we must find a good hard case.”

  “For example.”

  He shrugged. “One will turn up.”

  Her face brightened. “I know one,” she said. “A perfect case. And there must be dozens of them, everywhere.”

  “What?”

  “In the village where I used to teach at Sunday school there was an imbecile girl. Not a mongol, you understand, just very simple. And she was always either expecting or having babies. The village youths used to line up in wait for her. Out in the fields every night.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “That’ll be our first. Then we’ll find a case just a bit softer, and then softer, until in the end…”

  “…the law is ‘more honoured in the breach than…’ Oh, but honestly, Victor, doesn’t it make you sick! When you think of the official tolerance that is daily extended to the debauching and seduction of those same unmarried girls, and how widespread…”

  “Debauchery and Seduction, Unlimited, is an old established firm, my precious—mankind’s family business, you could say.” He laughed. “But what can we say of Advise and Consent, Universal, eh? It’s still looking for share capital!”

  “Talking of which,” she said, “we must take our begging bowl to Steamer.”

  Chapter 51

  Forget the East End,” Steamer said. “Come and open your institute in Stevenstown. You’re welcome to treat unmarried females, too, if you want.”

  “Really?” Abigail could hardly believe her ears.

  “I won’t say bastardy is a big expense to us, but it’s not small, either.”

  “To you?” Victor asked in surprise.

  “Haven’t you told him about Stevenstown?” Caspar asked her. Then, without waiting for an answer, he went on, “It’s our own company town, up near Stockton, in Durham. Everyone who works in our steel mills there, even the managers, has to live in it. We built it in eighteen forty-six, ’forty-seven. Neither the Earl nor I ever understood why the working man wants a lot of cash to jingle. They only drink it, or gamble. So we have the lowest-paid steelworkers in the land—and the best housed, best educated, healthiest, and best fed. And I daresay the happiest. There’s a hospital, nurseries, libraries, foot baths, swimming bath, concert hall, evening institutes, museum. So a ‘Bouvier Institute’ wouldn’t be too out of the way.” He turned to Abigail. “You know our latest? This’ll please you. We pay the wives half the wage—Aunt Arabella’s been badgering us for years to do it.”
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  “Does it work?”

  “I think it’s a disaster. The wives hate it. In the bad old days most of them got all the wages! But we’ll let it run for three months. Damn!”

  They had been standing in the dark, on the terrace at Falconwood, soaked by a light autumnal drizzle and admiring the effect of the electrical arc lighting on the great southern facade and clock tower. The drizzle had just extinguished one of the arc lights in a spectacular burst of sparks and crackles. Moments later the three other arc lights put on a similar display of pyrotechnics and left the world to darkness—and profanity.

  “Well, at least you saw it,” Caspar said.

  “Very impressive,” Victor assured him.

  “It smells like a photographer’s studio,” Abigail said.

  “It’s the smell of progress,” Caspar answered testily. “Why do you women always complain so bitterly about anything that smells of progress! The Conservatives are mad not to give you the vote—they’d double their representation by it.”

  They walked back across the terrace to the warmth and low-wattage lighting of the house.

  “Talking of complaints—you’re sure we’d have no trouble with the police?” Abigail asked.

  Caspar laughed. “Who d’you think put the chief constable where he is, eh? Who provides the quietest, soberest, most trouble-free streets in all England? Who pays for the annual police ball? I could open a casino there if I wanted.”

  “Then I don’t see,” Abigail said, “why we shouldn’t open two Bouvier Institutes. One for ‘Healthy Wives’ in the East End and one for ‘Healthy Women’ at Stevenstown. What about that? Of course, we’ll need the most generous support from the present owner of Stevenstown.”

  ***

  Annie was a marvellous recruiting sergeant; she knew exactly the right mixture of comedy, bullying, and straight talking to use. She also knew that if she harped on the medical services offered by the Bouvier Institute, she would frighten off as many as she might attract, so she concentrated her recruiting speeches on the one aspect that would prick their curiosity and allay their fears.

  Her target for each “drive” was an entire street and all the little yards and courts leading off it. She and a couple of helpers would run up and down knocking on all the doors; as soon as a woman answered they’d say, “’Ere—come out and have a cuppa tea, love. Come and listen to this.” They wouldn’t stay and argue, but ran straight to the next door as if breaking the news of the century. The woman would look up and down the street in bewilderment, see the mobile tea stall, and curiosity would do the rest. It wasn’t every day you were given a free cuppa by someone who looked like the queen’s own cousin—for it was, of course, Abigail who poured and served the tea.

  “They’ll never forget it, love,” Annie said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it—for them never to forget. Also they’ll know it’s respectable—which is important.”

  As soon as the crowd was gathered, Annie would mount up on an orange box and say, “You know who’s just given you that cuppa tea, with her own hands? Well, it’s not everyone here who could say—until today—they’ve taken tea with the daughter of an earl in the English peerage, is it! Yes! Baroness Bouvier, daughter of the Earl of Wharfedale. What? I should say! And it’s not the only thing she wants to give you—no, it’s only a start. What else, d’you say? I’ll tell you what else. The chance of a rest, that’s what. A rest from having one bleeding nipper after another. What you going away for, gel? Going home, are you? Is your old man home already?”

  Even if no one made to leave, Annie still looked vaguely at the back of the crowd and followed this line of patter.

  “Well, you can still feed him, my love—if you take my meaning. You can still give him his greens. What? I should say! He can have them on the kitchen table if he’s that eager. The Baroness don’t want to stop none of that. That’s not her game. Only you needn’t do a kitten as the other part of a bad bargain. What’s that, my love?” And here she would look at any woman near the front. “Not possible? ’Course it’s possible! All the nibs and nobby persons—they’re doing it all the time, aren’t they! They have their conjugals any time they like. And they don’t have no nippers unless they want them. Now here’s our chance—and about time, too, I say.”

  Here she would look back at the woman who had apparently said it was impossible. “Look at her—she still don’t believe me.” She began darting her finger over the crowd. “D’you believe me, love? D’you believe me? Do you?” She didn’t wait for an answer from any of them. “It don’t matter. You don’t have to believe me. I’m not asking you to believe me. All I’m saying is come and see for yourselves. ’Cause seeing’s believing, ain’t it? Come up the Bouvier Institute any afternoon, any evening. What’s that, me old love? Where’s the Bouvier Institute? Blimey! Where’ve you ladies been living? Where’s the Bouvier Institute? What? The Bouvier Institute for Healthy Wives? Where is it? Well, here’s a shilling for anyone who can tell me.”

  Here there was a dramatic pause while dozens of uplifted eyes fixed on the shining silver. Dozens of brains were racked and dozens of lips licked in forlorn hope. “The Bouvier Institute for Healthy Wives?” Annie repeated slowly, fixing the name—and the simultaneous sight of the silver—in their memories. “No? Pity.” She put the silver away amid gasps of disappointment. “Well!” Her eyes begged for fair play. “I can’t give a shilling for nothing, can I! But I’ll tell you what I can give you. I can give you sixpence! Yes—each and every one of you, I can give sixpence. What about that, then!” She fished out an impressive-looking voucher. “There! You take that up the co-op in Dalston Lane and Mr. Watts there, he’ll give you six penn’orth of groceries for it. I s’pose you do all know where the co-op is!”

  Of course they all nodded and murmured yes. “Well, that’s a mercy because the Bouvier Institute’s right next door, on the corner of Mare Street! One other thing—see this white space here, on the bottom? That’s for Mrs. Fletcher, very nice lady up the Institute, to put her stamp and sign her monnicker. Mr. Watts won’t give you nothing till that’s filled in proper. Is that all right? Any other questions? What’s that, love? Me? No, I won’t be there meself—I’ll be up the Throat Hospital, ’cause I’m losing me voice, see!”

  Annie must have delivered the speech forty times over the two months during which the clinic was put into operation. Toward the end when everybody knew where the Bouvier Institute was, she changed “the shilling question,” offering the coin to anyone who could spell it properly or give its exact title. And since the cockney genius had, just as she predicted, already transmuted Bouvier into Bovver-yer, her coin was usually safe. The sixpenny vouchers were her idea, though she intended it only as a come-all-you. Abigail decided to make it permanent: every woman who visited the clinic got one, every time. In the end they cost nothing, for the co-op was willing to drop threepence on their value for the sake of the extra trade it brought, and the manufacturers of the various medicines and devices they dispensed made up the other threepence.

  Abigail carried home to Victor and Frances all the tales of these recruiting drives, doing so perfect an imitation of Annie that, as Frances said, “it makes the hair rise on the back of my neck to watch it.”

  Abigail took the precaution of writing personally to the Home Secretary, asking his advice and seeking to know whether his ministry was aware of any unwitting contravention of the law by the Bouvier Institute. She explained their procedure in the fullest detail, making it clear that their Malthusian work was confined to married females and was, in any case, only a small part of their charitable work. Henry Matthews did not reply in person, but the writer drew their attention to Section III (Protection of Women and Girls) of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. She sought counsel’s opinion at once.

  “It would be very English,” Victor said, “if we were to be prosecuted under an Act for the protection of women and girls.”
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  But counsel’s opinion was that the reply was bluff. The only paragraph of the Act with any conceivable relevance read: “Any person who procures or attempts to procure any girl or woman under 21 years of age, not being a common prostitute, or of known immoral character, to have unlawful carnal connexion, either within or without the Queen’ dominions, with any other person or persons…shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, etc.”

  Since, in English law, he continued, carnal connexion was unlawful only with girls under sixteen, or girls who were imbeciles, or in the case of rape and incest, and, furthermore, since the offence of procuration required the procurer to receive some reward or consideration from the person on whose behalf the female is procured, no prosecution could be sustained. Writing to the Home Secretary was a shrewd move, he added. “Make copies of the reply and keep several on the premises so that, if you are raided, they will know at once what the Home Office view is—and will, moreover, be directed up the blind alley of the C.L.A.A., 1885, Part III.”

  Counsel added: “As to literature, keep as little as possible on the premises. With your clientèle I imagine word-of-mouth instruction would be in any case more effective. Books already on open sale are safe enough, such as Law of Population and The Wife’s Handbook: also journals like The Malthusian. Since the utter collapse of the Bradlaugh and Besant prosecution in 1878, the authorities have been shy of a second humiliation.”

  When the Gladstone government came in that August, Abigail took the chance to write to Asquith, the new Home Secretary, and ask if his opinion and advice differed from that of the previous administration. He replied that it did not. Copies of that letter, too, were kept at the Institute.

  It was very much to Abigail’s chagrin that, after taking such elaborate counterprecautions, they were never once raided—not even by cat burglars or pruriently curious small boys.