A Proper Education for Girls (33 page)

Dr. Cattermole, she realized, was talking again. “But of course, Miss Talbot,” he was saying, “when your father erroneously decided to foster within you a spirit of inquiry and a thirst for knowledge, he had no idea that he was also sending you down a road which would eventually, inevitably, lead to the degeneration of your mind and body.” He looked Alice up and down, adjusting his spectacles as he did so. His gaze lingered on her large hands, the vague undulations of her dress where her bosom was located. “I feel obliged to point out to you that flat-chestedness and a general absence of the female physical form, a mannish gait, irritability of temper, attacks of ill health—indeed, only last night you were unable
to attend dinner due to some indefinable malady—all these stem from the wrong sort of education causing a weakening of the whole female economy. I can only concur with Dr. Clarke of Harvard, when he states that any form of education that is not aimed at preparing the female for womanhood, for marriage and the family, serves to
masculinize
that female, resulting in a
hermaphroditic
condition: a woman divested of her sex, lacking in any female attractions and also, I suspect, her chief feminine functions.”

Alice opened her mouth to speak but her father put his hand on her arm. “You would be better advised to remain silent,” he said. “After all, you may learn something about your own condition.”

“What condition?” hissed Alice. “There is nothing the matter with me.”

“If I might be so bold as to explain, Talbot,” continued Dr. Cattermole, ignoring this whispered exchange. “It is known to be the case that intellectual work reduces the supply of nerve energy to the female reproductive system. The result of this lack of nerve energy? The mind rebels, collapses even! Mania can, and will, ensue. Nymphomania too is not unknown.” He lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “Your father also informs me that not ten days ago he saw you offer yourself to Mr. Blake. Is this not degeneracy? Is it not a misapplication of the female reproductive urge?”

Dr. Cattermole's face was inches from her own, so that Alice could feel his warm sugary breath on her cheek. “My father was mistaken,” she said, turning her head away from him in unconcealed disgust. “Ask Mr. Blake if you don't believe me.”

“I do not think your father was mistaken,” hissed Dr. Cattermole. “And perhaps Mr. Blake will be prevailed upon to tell us the truth—if the price is high enough.”

“And this breakdown in the mind is inevitable?” interrupted Mr. Talbot. “My dear Cattermole, this is not what you told me when you first explained the situation.”

“I have made some inquiries,” said Dr. Cattermole. “I consulted a number of colleagues. Those who specialize in the nervous diseases of women are in no doubt.”

Alice swallowed. Was there anything she might do or say to save herself? Perhaps she should swoon, or weep, or fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness. Should she lower her eyes and say nothing? Should she call upon her father to step in and defend the education with which he had, until recently, so unstintingly provided her? But she did none of these things. She knew that her fate, whatever it was, had already been decided upon. She would be better off, surely, trying to find out what it was. “And what are the symptoms of this imminent mental collapse?” she demanded. “What evidence do you have that your diagnosis, if one can call such nonsense a diagnosis, is correct?”

Dr. Cattermole whipped a book out of his pocket and proceeded to leaf through its pages. Over his shoulder, Alice could see the margins heavily annotated with the doctor's own scribbles.

“Here,” he cried. “Dr. Baker Brown is most erudite. The case of ‘Miss T. S.,’ for instance. Her symptoms included ‘being impolite to visitors, being forward and open to gentlemen and staring them quite out of countenance, and spending much time in serious reading.’ Brown also states that she was also reported to be ‘most disobedient to her father's wishes.’ Why, Miss Talbot, can you deny that these epithets describe your own character and behavior? Your own state of being?” He turned to Mr. Talbot and added in an undertone, “I might also add that ‘Miss T S.’ had received not one single offer of marriage in all her thirty-four years!”

Alice looked at the ground and closed her eyes in despair.

“But the remedy is known, is it not?” interjected Mr. Talbot. “You assured me that it was.” He fidgeted sweatily, plucking at the sleeves of his coat that had slicked to his arms in the heat.

“There are a number of remedies.” Dr. Cattermole smiled at Alice. “Fear not, child, there are ways of returning you to that most welcome state of ladylike graciousness that so becomes the fair sex. Why, Brown records that ‘Miss T S.’ herself was quite transformed after his surgical interventions.”

“And what relevance is this to me?” said Alice. She sounded
angry, but the words “surgical intervention” were ringing in her ears so that she could hardly stop her voice from shaking.

Dr. Cattermole ignored her. Instead, he turned to her father. “But first, I think the Society would be most interested in seeing her in her present condition, Talbot.” He gazed at Alice greedily. “Perhaps a photograph or two would suffice, with your father's permission, of course. The open hostility of your countenance is symptomatic of your condition. Charcot, in France, has photo graphed numerous insane patients to great acclaim.”

“I will not be photographed,” said Alice. “And I am most certainly not insane.”

“What is the cure?” said Mr. Talbot. His face was scarlet with the heat; his beard, moist with droplets of water, dangled from his chin like a hank of Spanish moss. He gazed at Alice, his expression a mixture of fear and alarm, as though he expected her to begin gnashing her teeth and rending her clothes there and then.

“The state of mind of the female is linked to her sexual function,” said Dr. Cattermole briskly. “Remedies to suppress the spirit and thus calm the overtaxed mind include injections of iced water into the rectum and the application of leeches to the labia and cervix.”

Alice felt her skin turn cold and her head began to swim. She looked from Dr. Cattermole's pale, excited countenance to her father's livid, perspiring one but said nothing. Indeed, there was nothing she could say, as her tongue seemed to have cleaved to the roof of her mouth. She looked at her father, hoping to see expressions of horror appear on his face but instead she saw only bemusement. It was clear he had no idea what Dr. Cattermole was talking about. Labia and cervix? What mysterious body parts were these? Leeches he understood well, however. Even as she watched Alice could see her father's expression of perplexity dissolve into relieved understanding. Most useful creatures! All would be well, he was thinking; all his unhappy daughter required to relieve her of this incipient malady was a good leeching.

“Excellent, sir!” he cried. “And that is all?”

“In many cases, yes.”

“But not in all cases.” Mr. Talbot's face darkened.

Alice felt her stomach tighten. What else could there be?

“In order to halt the advancement of a disease that would otherwise progress to hysteria, and from thence to idiocy, mania, even death, it is often found necessary to remove the clitoris,” said Dr. Cattermole.

“Surgery!” Mr. Talbot looked aghast, then intrigued. “Is it a big job?”

“No greater than removing the tip of a finger, say.”

“Well then.” Mr. Talbot patted Alice's arm. “You have nothing to worry about. Why, Sluce has sliced the tip off three of his fingers and he is none the worse for it. Cattermole, my dear fellow, can I be assured that you have performed such a procedure before?”

“I have not, but I am eager to do so. It would be a new venture for me, though I know how devoted you are, Talbot, to extending the boundaries of our knowledge and experience.”

“Oh, indeed. Especially if the results can be guaranteed. You are certain it will be effective?”

“I have never heard of a recurrence of the disease following such a procedure.” Dr. Cattermole stroked the cover of his book with the tips of his long pale fingers. “She would not visit Mr. Blake's chambers, nor the chambers of any other man, ever again.”

A
LICE WRAPPED HER COAT TIGHTLY ABOUT HERSELF AND
walked to the edge of the roof. Beyond the tips of her boots the slates fell away in a steep slope, below which the lawn at the front of the house unfurled. A man strode across it with a smaller, more ragged and stooped figure in shambling pursuit. It was her father, closely followed by Sluce, inspecting the site of his artificial volcano. He had been insistent that the sods of earth be replaced once the mixture of sulfur and iron filings had been buried, and now only a certain irregularity of the warp and weft of the greensward spoke of any disturbance below ground. That, and the presence of muddy footprints leading to and from a huge heap of earth that had appeared a hundred feet away.

Alice watched the two figures as they walked the circumference of the dormant volcano. Her father searched the ground anxiously. Sluce ambled in his wake, his hands thrust deep within his mnemonic pockets. Every few steps, at intervals dictated by his master, he would produce a long, pointed stick from some inner compartment of his coat and jab at the ground, as though skewering a large, slowly baking subterranean fruitcake.

There remained only an hour or so before the Society convened in the ballroom. Alice knew that somewhere beneath her feet Dr. Cattermole would be angrily stalking her father's crowded corridors. She returned to her seat in the shelter of a chimney. He would never dream of looking for her on the roof.

Huddled in her coat out of the wind, Alice did not hear the footsteps that came toward her across the rooftop.

“Tea?” Mr. Blake set the tray down against the chimney and poured out two cups of tea. At first neither of them spoke. Then, “Aunt Pendleton told me that your father had been speaking to you. With Dr. Cattermole.”

Alice closed her eyes. “It seems I am to be Dr. Cattermole's first clitoridectomy.”

Mr. Blake could not stop his tea from slopping onto his saucer.

“With my father's permission, of course.”

The photographer stared out across the park. “Cattermole is a determined man,” he said, “when he wants something.”

“And I am a determined woman,” said Alice.

“I have no doubt. But you cannot hide up here forever. Perhaps if we told your father that we are to be married?”

“It is too late for marriage to save me,” said Alice. “Dr. Cattermole said so himself. No doubt he would regard the need for surgery to be even more pressing if he understood that I had been so willful as to have courted a man behind my father's back.”

“Those photographs,” Mr. Blake said after a moment. “The ones you found in my trunk. Were you aware that Cattermole was … involved in their production?”

“Dr. Cattermole has been a guest in this house many times. There is less privacy here than you might expect. It is easy to forget an item—a portfolio, a diary, a pocketbook, an album of
cartes-de-visite
—when there are so many of my father's artifacts cluttering every surface in every room.” She shrugged. “I have known for a long time. And I knew you were his dupe. His wife poses for him too.”

“Really?”

“Mrs. Cattermole admitted as much to me. You did not know?”

Mr. Blake shook his head. “Your father must disapprove, surely?”

“I have no idea. He has recently become so intimate with Dr.
Cattermole that there is no knowing what the two of them are up to. Cattermole officiated at my sister's confinement, you know. If you can call such butchery ‘confinement.’ I was obliged to be his assistant.” Alice closed her eyes at the thought of the doctor's thin white fingers positioning her sister's feet in the dreadful stirrups of the operating table. She would rather leap from the roof of her father's house there and then than submit to Dr. Cattermole's touch on her bare flesh. And yet, it was since he had assisted in concealing Lilian's disgrace that his influence with her father had grown. She pulled out Aunt Lambert's brandy bottle and set it down on the stone seat. “I have this to keep me warm. I have some books with me. A lantern. I have my writing box. What more do I need?”

“You would be as well to hide downstairs. You might find it easier to avoid Dr. Cattermole if you know where he is and what he is up to. There will be no escape if he finds you up here. You might hide in the ballroom. He would never dream of looking for you there. I have made certain he would never see you—”

Alice shook her head. At that moment she did not think she could even bear to hear Dr. Cattermole's voice. She pulled her coat around her shivering shoulders and turned away.

Soon the sun began slipping behind the oaks at the end of the park. Long fingers of shadow stole across the ground. Mr. Blake remained at Alice's side. She urged him to return to the house, if not to attend the meeting then at least to gather some intelligence. But he refused to go unless she accompanied him to “weather the storm,” as he put it.

“Since you're in so nautical a frame of mind,” said Alice in response, “you might keep an eye on the gates through this.” She produced from within the coat a long brass telescope.