The Journal of Dora Damage

by Belinda Starling

  Each stack of paper was a collection of several hundred photographs. They were to be bound as a series of catalogues, each of a certain theme. The preface for the first read:

  This volume is for neither the prurient and perfidious, nor the ignorant and innocent. The artist of discernment, who professes the pursuit of truth, the liberation from taboos, and the continued supremacy of Britannia, as the higher motives behind his representations, will be best served by its contents. The nature of such an endeavour compels the reproduction of extreme imagery, which is a triumph of the technology of our age.

  I flicked through. Here entitled: ‘The Negro’s Revenge. Young wife violated by Negro in revenge for cruelties by master’. There: ‘Untitled. Stupration of mulatto daughters by father.’ Later on: ‘African maid circumcises female word.’

  The precious reader, artist or not, was not sufficiently warned by the preface. For these were by no means the worst. I picked up the second, then the third stack of papers, and scanned them all, until I was so stunned that the papers slipped from my hands and back into the crate, crushing the corners where they landed. I stood up slowly, then ran into the house and out to the privy where I vomited savagely.

  Even Jack was subdued. We talked in low tones, and noticed the trembling of each other’s cheeks. Once we had decided on the bindings, and trapped the images between suitably stiff endpapers, we didn’t turn the pages again.

  Hyperion to a satyr; antidote to a poison; this contrary world threw up to us a clash of perspectives, and Damage’s was the point of collision. For the following morning we received a package of an altogether different kind, shortly after Din arrived back for work with an innocent smile, as if to say ‘all well, ma’am?’

  But all did not look well with him either. He was walking stiffly, and his limp was more pronounced; his arm did not seem to move effectively, and he had a wound somewhere about his neck, which I did not notice at first, but which oozed on to his dirty collar throughout the morning.

  ‘Good morning, Din. I trust you had a pleasant day off.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am, most pleasant.’

  ‘Are you in trouble, Din?’ I asked him, as he struggled to sit down without pain.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he replied, and that was the end of the matter. I dared say nothing more, out of decorum.

  And then the aforementioned new package arrived, so I sent Din to make up some paste, and stood for a while, picking at the dry skin on my upper lip.

  ‘What’s in it, Jack?’ I eventually asked, nodding towards it.

  ‘Do you want me to have a look?’

  ‘Yes please.’ I pulled at a flake of skin, which stretched my lip away from my teeth.

  ‘No pictures,’ he said first. Then, ‘this one looks all right. And this one.’ The fragment came away from my lip. I pressed my bottom lip against the top, and tasted blood.

  ‘All manuscripts. Seven of them, all the same. They look pretty safe to me, Mrs D. You can look now. It’s all right.’

  And so I sat, and read, wetting my lips with my tongue to ease the smarting, as Din came in with fresh paste.

  My dear Mrs Damage

  It seems a tremendous while since we first met. And how tedious my life has become since then! Jossie has been a frightful bore about my condition; it seems I must rest around the clock. I have missed everything worth seeing this summer, and I fear I shall miss the Mistletoe Players’ Production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Phoenix if the baby does not appear until after Christmas. Still, I am blessed to be married to the finest physician in London, and am nearing the end of my confinement with as much good grace as I can muster!!!

  My activities with the Society continue apace, notwithstanding Jossie’s disapproval. And here I come to the purpose of my letter. You may have heard of Mr Frederick Douglass, Mr William Wells Brown, Mr Josiah Henson & many others; if you have not, I assure you their names will soon be unforgettable to you, for their stories are certainly! Many is the lecture I have attended given by these eminent former slaves, and I wish I could share with you now the eloquence with which they captivate their audience: they terrify & enthrall, & elicit copious tears, reverent anger, &inspired action! Many are the panoramas I have viewed which have reinforced to my eyes what my ears had witnessed, illustrating the horrendous conditions under which they are forced to live and work! Many are the torture implements I have touched &shrunk from, &c., which they exhibit at these events! And many are the narratives I have purchased after such an experience, & of that ilk is the document which I am proud to enclose.

  It is entitled My Bondage and My Freedom, by Mr Frederick Douglass. Herewith are seven copies, all still in their trade paper bindings. You will see it is already in its fifth edition!!

  I & several of my Society colleagues would like to have them personally re-bound by you for the Society with the Society’s emblem and motto centre-top, for which I have enclosed the appropriate tools. Centre itself requires an engraving of Douglass’s profile; I enclose some recent portraits of him for reference.

  I also enclose the appropriate sum for your pains!

  After my confinement I shall be visited by Mr Charles Gilpin, publisher of William Wells Brown’s narrative, & will recommend to him your furnishing for the quality end of the market. William Wells Brown sold 12,000 copies in 1850 alone, when I was a mere girl. We need our treasured copies beautifully bound for longevity & as a mark of respect for their noble contents!

  In the hopes that this letter finds you and the dear dark boy well

  Yours &c.,

  Sylvia, Lady Knightley

  The change in patron, author and subject matter came as a tremendous relief. Jack went out to buy some leather, while Din and I removed the trade bindings and the old stitching, and sewed through all seven manuscripts. When we had finished, we took a copy each, and settled down to read, he in the sewing chair, I in the gold-tooling booth, as Lucinda sat at the bench and drew pictures.

  We paused for a mug of beer at lunch-time. ‘How do you fare, Din?’ I gestured towards the book, to make it clear I was not talking about his injuries.

  He weighed my question for a while, then casually dropped it on the floor.

  ‘You don’t cry,’ he said. ‘In America they say the ladies of England increase the ocean between us with their tears for us. Are you not moved?’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘An’ so did I.’

  ‘Would tears convince you of emotion?’

  ‘No. I am an innocent, ma’am, in the ways of English women.’

  ‘And so am I, Din, so am I. In the ways of English men, too. But I wish to know your reaction to what you have read.’

  ‘An’ I wish to know yours.’ He sat back in his chair and folded his arms as best he could.

  But there were no words I could use. What mattered my reaction in the face of his human defiance of human monsters; what purpose his reaction, having been treated inhumanely himself by the inhuman?

  ‘Tell me, instead, how this compares to your life. Is this what it was like for you?’

  ‘There are similarities,’ he returned, ‘both bein’ captive, an’ escapers, an’ fugitives. But his life is not mine. You can’t know one by knowin’ the other.’

  ‘Have you thought of doing this, Din? Of writing your own narrative?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘But I’m sure you could. You are intelligent; you can write. It might help you fathom it.’

  He shrugged. ‘Why would I need to?’

  ‘It would certainly make money.’

  ‘What do I be needin’ money for?’ he asked. ‘I have a job, don’ I?’ It sounded as if he were mocking me. He rested his hands on his knees and leant forward, as if to get up.

  ‘How about the cause? It would raise money for the abolitionist cause.’

  ‘You mean your society o’ ladies?’ And now he was rounding on me, for sure.

  ‘You have something to say about them?’

&nbs
p; He paused. His silence was beguiling. What was he withholding? He was smiling to himself, and his head was cocked.

  ‘Come now, Din,’ I cajoled. ‘I have no allegiance to them. You wish to tell me something?’ I smiled and beckoned; he grinned back at me, then nodded to himself.

  ‘All right, ma’am.’ A secret; he was going to tell me a secret. He placed his hands on the back of his head, stretched and winced, pondered for a while, then wound me towards him with his words.

  ‘Let me tell you, ma’am,’ he said, with deliberate intrigue, ‘about what they have bought.’ He stopped.

  ‘You, Din?’ I prompted.

  ‘That’s right. But how they be usin’ me!’ I thought he half-winked at me, but it could have been the tremors of a bruised eye.

  ‘How, Din?’

  He was quiet again, smiling.

  ‘Din!’ I shrieked. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘They send for me, ma’am.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When the fancy takes them.’

  I giggled nervously like a young girl. ‘And?’

  ‘And . . .’ He was still weighing up how much he could tell me.

  ‘I want to know everything, Din! Don’t do this to me!’

  ‘And . . .’ And then he was off. ‘They take me into this room, ma’am, this red room in her house, an’ they put the pelt of a tiger round me, an’ a spear in this hand an’ a shield in that, an’ ask me to stand about like a Zulu warrior. “Ooh, a Zoo-loo, a Zoo-loo,” they cry, an’ wave their arms.’

  ‘Oh my! Din!’ I cried. ‘How monstrous!’ But how fabulous, too! What knowledge!

  My reaction encouraged him further. ‘I’m their dandy Zoo-loo. An’ so I stand, an’ I wait, an’ they look at me, like they seen nothin’ like me before, an’ treat me for a fool.’

  ‘How degrading that must be for you!’

  He shrugged. ‘They the ones degradin’ themselves. They the fools.’

  ‘What else do they do?’

  But he would not answer. He simply sat and smiled. So I moved slightly closer to him. A question burnt my lips; I did not know if I dared ask, until it spoke itself for me. ‘Do they touch you, Din?’ I said quietly.

  He paused, and held my gaze, still grinning. ‘Oh, Lor’, do they touch me!’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘They stroke my arms, an’ they kiss my brand –’ here he pulled up his sleeves to show his tattoo ‘– an’ they cry tears over me, an’ they say, “Oh, Sylvia, how his skin shine!” an’ “Oh, his teeth be so white an’ fright’nin’!” They keep me there so late, sometimes, they send me to climb out up by the coal cellar so I don’ be scarin’ the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  And he shrugged again, and laughed wryly. ‘It ain’t how I choose to spend my evenings, no, but it ain’t pickin’ cotton neither.’

  A thought crossed my mind. ‘Is this where you go, Din, of a Friday?’

  His temper changed. ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘I ain’t gonna be tellin’ you.’

  ‘That is fair, Din. If it is half as humiliating as what you do for the ladies, you should be keeping it to yourself.’ What else did they do to the boy? My boy, I was already feeling.

  ‘And indeed I will, ma’am,’ he said, tapping his finger to the side of his nose. ‘Shall I be waxin’ the cords now, ma’am?’

  I handed him the candle-stub, and we shared one last smile as he took it from me. I wandered slowly back into the booth, warm with conspiracy, to plan the new design.

  I laid out all the portraits of Douglass. He was a handsome man: his large hair was swept over neatly in a parting to one side, and on the other it rose upwards like an irrepressible spirit. His brows were arched, and met in a deep furrow over his strong nose, and he had a wide chin. None of the pictures – even the line-drawings – were simple enough to be transposed on to leather, so I started to sketch my own version, with the right balance of strong and weak lines according to the tools available to me, and my own level of skill at using them.

  Yet I could not get it right. I drew face after face, with increasing agitation, and the more I drew, the more I feared Din would come over to ask me something. For every face on every scrap of paper bore little resemblance to Frederick Douglass, with his large hair, and straight nose, and looked every inch like our own Din Nelson, hairless, with precise, heavy brows, a broken nose, a thick lower lip, and an uneven gleam across both cheekbones, which I could only guess betrayed the damage he had formerly suffered. I could not get the eyes even, the nose straight, the cheeks level.

  I worked on the gold-tooling throughout the following day, only vaguely aware of the hammerings, the planings, the sewings around me. It took significant quantities of gold, for I decided that the hue of his skin would best be portrayed by solid gold, rather than just a gold outline, and Lady Knightley was paying me well. I finished the binding around five o’clock, and emerged from the gold-tooling booth in a state of confusion and embarrassment. For, try as I might, the face that glistened back at me and the rest of the workshop from the cover of My Bondage and My Freedom was Din’s, not Douglass’s.

  Was it that his Negro features dominated my perception of how a black man looked, in the way people claim to be unable to tell one Chinaman from another? Or was it that I preferred his unbalanced features to Douglass’s more perfect ones? I had never previously stopped in my tracks to admire a man of his colour in the way that I (I had to confess) admired Sir Jocelyn Knightley, or even Peter, once upon a time. I found beauty in the man, beauty where I least expected to find it.

  ‘Let me see, Mrs D,’ Jack said, ambling over from his bench.

  ‘I – no – it’s not quite –’ I scanned the workshop hastily. ‘My, where’s Din?’

  ‘He was ’ere just a while back. Has ’e given us the slip again? I don’t believe it.’

  But he had; somehow, from our very midst, while we were deep amongst the millboards and gold-leaf, he had managed to escape us.

  ‘The cracksman! What yer gonna do abaht him, Mrs D? It’s not as if it’s the mornin’ after pay-day, when you’d expect a few sore ’eads, even in Mr D’s day.’ But still, Damage’s had never been a place of unexplained leave, except in cases of severe illness or domestic disaster. I wondered what disciplinary procedures the Society would approve of.

  ‘You are right Jack. It is unacceptable.’ But it was not for me today. I showed Jack the book.

  ‘Nice,’ he said, ‘and, by the way, forgot to tell ya, Select Skins asked me to pass on a message, that you still ain’t settled your credit, an’ they’re gettin’ a bit crusty abaht it, to say the least.’

  Even Lucinda, when she came bounding into the workshop, noticed nothing. I had expected her to stare at the book and ask why Din’s face was on the cover. But she didn’t; she simply ran her finger over the Society’s emblem and said, ‘That’s pretty.’ It was clear, or so I was able to persuade myself, that any resemblance was a figment of my untrustworthy imagination.

  And so our brief respite had ended. Douglass’s wonderful work was like Jack amongst the turd-collectors, a gem sparkling amidst excrement. The crates kept arriving from Diprose. They were getting worse, too, or so Jack told me as he riffled through their contents, and I shrivelled into myself as he told me what was inside. More photographic catalogues – ‘Nah, ya really mustn’t looka’ these, Mrs D. Not for you, not for you, Mrs D’ – but also more stories, prints, and the like, the titles of which Jack read to me.

  ‘Choose one for me, just so I can see for myself.’

  ‘All right, Mrs D,’ he said doubtfully, and flicked through a few manuscripts, most of which he hastily put back in the crate. ‘All right, here’s one, but I have warned you. Scientific nonsense, again, I think.’

  It was entitled Afric-Anus, and subtitled, A Scientific Foray into the Size of the Negro Rectum in Relation to the Penis; followed by an Essay on the Libidinosity of Women of Colour. I opened it to a page that depict
ed the prodigious posterior and pendulous labia of the Hottentot Venus.

  And that was it. In an instant, I knew that I would have to find my employment elsewhere. I had other ways of feeding my family, and of providing to Messrs Skinner and Blades, and to Mrs Eeles. I was a fully fledged bookbinder now, and I would ply my trade elsewhere. Diprose, Knightley, and the lot of them could go hang.

  Chapter Thirteen

  How many miles to Babylon?

  Three-score and ten.

  Can I get there by candle-light?

  Yes, and back again.

  If your heels are nimble and light,

  You may get there by candle-light.

  On Monday morning I knocked on Agatha Marrow’s door, Lucinda at my side. She clutched the Danish tin, which still contained a few of the pastries, and which I had topped up with some bon-bons and marshmallows, by way of thanks. I knocked again.

  ‘How strange. I don’t think she’s there.’

  ‘But I saw Biddy and Bitsy, at the window!’

  ‘What, this one?’

  ‘No, upstairs. Maybe they don’t want to play with me today.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘And we’ve got a present for them, and it’s still not even Christmas.’

  But the door remained shut, so we walked back up Ivy-street to our house. Jack was hunting for a clean cloth in the kitchen.

  ‘I can stay here with Jack, Mama. Can I? Can I?’ Lucinda asked.

  ‘There isn’t one, Jack love, I’m afraid. You’ll have to make do with this one.’ I threw him a dirty brown rag.

  Lucinda started to jump up and down. ‘Can I, can I?’