Tattycoram (13 page)

“My name?”

“Yes. For the time being. For as long as you are at Urania Cottage. I'm talking about your last name, of course — Coram.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Two and twenty, Harriet, two and twenty! It just occurred to me that these girls might respect you less if they heard the name Coram, for of course they would know immediately that you were brought up at the Foundling.”

“Would they, sir? Immediately?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“I think I'll keep my name, nevertheless. Perhaps I can serve as an example to them — through my name, I mean.”

“I hadn't thought of that. Yes. An example. Excellent.”

I thoroughly disliked him at that moment, for it was obvious he had paid no attention to my tone of voice.

He left, satisfied, and I sat there, trembling with anger.

My sewing suffered that night; I had to unpick it all the next day and start again. I went to see Mr. Dickens and said I would change my name — to Harriet Naughton.

Shepherd's Bush was not precisely the back of beyond, but it was close. Quite rural until a few years before, it still had market gardens to feed the capital and gravel pits north of the green. At night, even in our area, it was not safe. However, the house was large and pleasant, each girl had her own room, and the experiment seemed to be off to a good start; the first girl wept when
she saw her room and was handed the key to her bedroom door. Like anyone, Mr. Dickens appreciated spontaneous displays of gratitude.

As I suspected, there were a great many rules and regulations, drawn up by Mr. Dickens and approved by Miss Burdett-Coutts, but these girls, who had come straight from prison, were used to rules and regulations and accepted them without protest, at least at first. If they expected life here would be more relaxed on that score, they were very much mistaken. There was a set time to get up, a set time for bed, regular times for meals. And there was a “Marks System,” which Mr. Dickens had based on the ideas of a prison reformer he knew. A thousand marks would earn a girl six shillings and sixpence, and if she received high scores in most of the categories (Temper, Punctuality, Industry, Truthfulness, and so on) she might earn as much as £2.12s a year. Each girl had her own book, which was kept in Matron's desk drawer. I think Truthfulness was the most difficult for them; since they had spent years practising falsehood and deception, the lies came automatically. And they stole — ridiculous things like a reel of cotton or a button from the button box, nothing they really needed — just for the excitement, to see what they could get away with. Sometimes they reminded me of Grip.

The first time they were caught, they were reprimanded; the second time, they were sent away. This seemed very hard to me, but Mr. Dickens said that if Urania Cottage were to succeed, its inhabitants had to accept and abide by the rules. There should be no exceptions.

The first girl who was dismissed, Nora Doyle, affected us all. A pretty Irish girl of about nineteen, she had been on the streets since childhood. She not only stole — a teaspoon, embroidery floss, a quarter pound of tea from the caddy — she cursed like
a sailor. And yet there she was, down on her knees, weeping and begging for another chance. She'd be a good girl now, she promised she would, only don't send her away.

Mr. Dickens shook his head.

“This is exactly what you said the last time, Nora.”

“Oh, I'm a backslider, sir, I am that. I'm a wicked girl, but I'm tryin'.”

It was coming on to Christmas and dark at four in the afternoon. Matron fetched a bonnet and a warm shawl from the store cupboard, and Mr. Dickens gave her a shilling to pay for a place to spend the night.

I shall never forget the sight of that girl going out the door, her face all swollen with weeping, and Mr. Dickens turning to us with tears in his own eyes; “I had no choice.” We included Nora in our evening prayers that night. God knows what happened to her. I thought I saw her once, in a doorway, but I was never sure.

My own duties were not onerous, the chief one being to teach reading, writing and handicrafts. Most of the girls could barely write their names, and so I could have been back in the little school in Shere, watching the children frown as they practised big A and little a or sounded out a word from a primer. They liked handicrafts better, and some became excellent knitters and embroiderers. They began to put away articles they could take with them to Australia or South Africa when the time came. (The possibility of marriage in a new land, with their past behind them, had been hinted at but never guaranteed.) Matron and I together instructed them in basic household duties, for it was a given that, whatever their lives might be like eventually, they would arrive on distant shores trained as domestic servants. Miss Burdett-Coutts had an arrangement with certain bishops,
who would see to placing them in good homes. (I suppose she meant the homes of officers or of colonists.) They even learned to bake bread, and in the springtime, under the direction of the gardener, they planted seeds in the back garden.

They talked about the future sometimes, chattering away in the evenings, one or the other of them with Ori on her lap — like most cats, he was fond of laps. What would it be like, the long ocean voyage, the new country? Nearly all were determined to find a protector, in the form of a husband, although we tried to discourage such talk. When it turned ten o'clock and each repaired to her solitary cot, what did they dream about, I wonder.

After a year our first girls set out in twos and threes, modest in dress and manner, ready to be born again into respectability (of the servant class, of course). They travelled steerage, and we heard later about the few who had succumbed to temptation and taken up their old ways on the voyage out. I was never quite sure what happened to those few (and they were few) and didn't want to ask. They certainly wouldn't be sent back to England. There were brothels in the colonies, and women were so scarce that men would marry them anyway, no matter what their past. Most prospered, however, found good situations and some the decent husband they had hoped for. Mr. Dickens and Miss Burdett-Coutts were delighted when they received a good report or even a letter from the girl herself.

I was never entirely comfortable at Urania Cottage, and I think I would have been quite lonely if I hadn't been so busy. Mrs. Dickens had pressed me to come and visit after I returned to London, and I did call, once or twice, but Charley was away at school and none of the other children remembered me. Miss Georgina, firmly ensconced at Devonshire Terrace and as bossy
as ever, was politely rude, both to me and about Urania Cottage.

“I cannot understand why Charles is so involved in the place; he is too kind-hearted, and, what with his many family responsibilities and his writing, I fear his health is suffering.”

Mrs. Dickens smiled. “Did you ever know Charles to do anything he didn't want to do?”

“Be that as it may, this home is taking up far too much of his time. And quite frankly I don't think the leopard can change its spots or the lioness her nature. The whole experiment is a waste of time and money.” She sighed. “Charles always wants to think the best of everybody, even prostitutes.”

I spoke up. “Not all of the women are prostitutes, Miss Georgina. Some have been taken up for shoplifting or even for attempting suicide. I think he wants to see if, with kindness, with a roof over their heads, enough to eat and some instruction, they can't rise above what's happened in the past. He calls it tempting them to virtue instead of vice.”

She gave me her little smile, as if to say, yes, well you
would
say that.

Neither she nor Mrs. Dickens ever came to Urania Cottage to see for themselves, but he may have asked them not to; I had told him about the fashionable ladies and our humiliating Sunday dinners.

I look long walks on my days off, sometimes ending in Kensington Gardens, reading a book if the weather were fine or tatting as I watched the children steering their toy yachts with long poles. It seemed to me that I was fated, to a great extent, to be a looker-on at life, and I tried to be content with that. There was a ragged old man who often came to the gardens — I suspect he was there every day — and he always had stale crusts or broken bits of pastry for the birds. I think this was his
way of lightening his loneliness. He could set out with a definite goal — “I must go and feed my ducks; they will be expecting me” — thus giving shape to his day. Others, young and old, unemployed or unemployable, sat on the benches and simply stared straight ahead. I would never allow myself to become like that. I could always go back to Shere and find something to do there, needlework until my eyes gave out, minding children. I was paid by Mr. Dickens every quarter, and I put half my wages in the savings bank, against the time when I would return home. I also sold some of my collars and cuffs to the shop on Southampton Row, so I did not think I would ever sink to abject poverty. Nevertheless I carried a purseful of coppers with me every week for the beggars, not because I could spare the money or even because I was overly kind. It was superstitious insurance, the way Mr. Dickens touched things three times, for luck. Or, as the Bible says, “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”

Elisabeth Avis came to us in our third year and was troublesome right from the start. She was neither a prostitute nor a thief but a starving needlewoman who had been arrested for stealing a footstool from her lodgings and attempting to pawn it. Her argument to the magistrate had been that she had repaired the cover and even replaced the trim around the edge, and since she had never been paid for either, she had a perfect right to pawn the thing and get her money that way. The landlady, when called upon to testify, said her lodger had had her rent reduced in the month when she made the repairs and was then in arrears for three months running. Elisabeth was
sentenced to Bridewell Prison for one year. Mr. Dickens, having interviewed her and been told of her model behaviour while in prison, decided to admit her.

“She says she is a clergyman's daughter,” he remarked, “and certainly her manners are a cut above the usual. But these women, whatever their crime, often say they are the daughters of clergymen. It is almost a standard reply.”

What she was, it soon became clear, was a moaner and a troublemaker. It appears that she had been mistreated since childhood, when her clergyman father and his wife had drowned in a boating accident and she was sent to live with an ancient aunt.

“I could tell straightaway, for I was a sensitive and perceptive child, that this woman only took me in because she had to, and loved me far less than she loved her little lapdog. I was left almost entirely in the care of her maid, who pulled my hair when she brushed it every morning. When I complained, she said if I would only keep still, it wouldn't happen. In the park she often walked too fast in an attempt to lose me. What she would have told my great-aunt if she had succeeded, I don't know, but I was on to her tricks and ran to keep up.

“When I was ten, I was sent to a boarding school. On my very first day the headmistress called the school together, introduced me and said she hoped they would all be ‘especially nice' because I had lost my father and mother at an early age. Well, I'm sure you know enough of girls to guess what happened. They were nice enough to my face, linked arms with me in the playground, offered me ribbons for my hair — I knew this was only a way of calling attention to its mousey colour — but they talked about me behind my back, made fun of my old-fashioned Sunday clothes, picked out for me by my great-aunt's
maid, and my inability to name the seven greatest rivers in the world. In fact my education had been almost non-existent, and at first I had to take my lessons with the younger girls. Since I was already tall for my age, I suffered even more humiliation.”

On and on she went, reciting a catalogue of the grievances and outrages that had been practised against her. This usually took place in the early evening, while Matron and I enjoyed a cup of tea in our sitting room before joining the girls for readings from Wordsworth, Crabbe, John Bunyan and the Bible. The girls liked to be read to, and it seemed to calm them down before bedtime. But now Elisabeth would think of an excuse to join us — usually a question about rules and regulations, which would lead to a hint dropped about violations of same by some girl or other, “naming no names,” and that done, she would take up the narrative of her past life. She never sat down, but towered over us like a smokestack, emitting clouds of self-pity and self-importance. After several minutes of this she would say, “I must not take up any more of your valuable time with my poor story” and disappear.

Mr. Dickens confessed that she did the same to him on his weekly visits.

“And how does she get on with the other girls?” he asked.

“She doesn't. She puts on too many airs. They call her ‘Betty' and ‘Betsey' when she insists on ‘Elisabeth.' It drives her wild.”

The one redeeming feature of Elisabeth Avis was her needlework. I was quite competent, very good, in fact, thanks to Mother and the sewing mistress at the Foundling, but Elisabeth was inspired. Of course she rejected praise with false modesty, but I could tell she was pleased. She made a beautiful teacloth with roses at every corner so real you could almost smell them. We saved it for the weekly visits of Mr. Dickens and the
occasional visits of Miss Burdett-Coutts. She made bookmarks for Matron and me, with suitable Biblical quotations. (Mine was from the story of the Queen of Sheba: “She came to prove him with hard questions.”) I had been teaching the needlework classes, but now I asked her if she wouldn't like to do it. We would put aside a small allowance for her every week, and then, when her year was up, she would have a bit of extra money.

“Oh no!” she said, “I could not possibly set myself above the other girls” — exactly what she had been doing since the day she arrived.