All the Pages that Women Write

Men write journals for posterity. For this reason it must be assumed that not a single word is true.

Women write only what is true, but forgo the posterity. The blank page is our confessional, the detail known only to ourselves. Every woman who keeps a journal fears its discovery. Every woman destroys their journal when death feels imminent - unless, of course, she confined herself to decorative sketching and whimsical observation, in which case posterity might yet be its purpose.

Every woman who keeps a journal fears sudden death the most, not because they are afraid of dying, but because their truths will be exposed.

And that won’t do at all, will it.

Yesterday I walked from my home in Park Row, down the slope of Park Street and immediately left onto the Quayside. It was a crisp autumn day and it has been dry for some time. The pavements were swept and so my skirts were not in danger of collecting dirt. (I write in my journal infrequently and so rather enjoy the little details that will aid my recall in dotage - just before I toss it in the fire).

My purpose was to return Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë to the W.H. Smith Circulating Library, which currently stands to the right of St Mary on the Quay and immediately to the left of my husband’s bank. This ancient institution bears the lyrical name of Baillie, Baillie, Cave and Co., which always puts me in mind of a nursery rhyme.

I was enchanted by Mrs Gaskell's biography, but my enthralment was matched by an equal measure of disappointment that it had met with such criticism since its publication. God forbid that a woman should most honestly portray the private life of her dear friend and literary sister! Do you see how a woman must restrict her honesty to the pages that no one else will read?

Well, she is at rest now. She died last year of a rather sudden heart attack whilst about her business. I feel sorry for that. Death is inevitable but few wish to be embarrassed by it.

The circulating library was opened in 1860 and has proved a great success, particularly amongst women. Perhaps men feel rather self-conscious about paying a guinea to rent books for a year, but it really does work out cheapest in the long run. If you don’t like a book, (and there have been plenty I have not), you are not obliged to give it a home. You may simply say, ‘Bye! Bye!’ and forget about it. But The Life was something I wanted to keep, and so my purpose yesterday was, firstly, to order my own copy, and secondly to rent a different volume from the countless on offer.

I avoid French authors as a matter of principle, but some American literature is very promising. I have purchased all the Nathaniel Hawthorne books I first rented, (although I certainly sensed some disapproval at my decision). Perhaps it has something to do with the bigger skies and the burgeoning sense that anything is possible, for good or ill, that draws me towards them. It certainly does not seem that women fare any better across the ocean, or that hypocrisy jettisoned itself somewhere along the voyage, but yet so, I feel that progress is more possible there than here.

Time will tell.

The ground floor of W.H. Smith is given over to non-fiction and periodicals. Generally speaking, this is where the males of the species come to graze. They also have a rather pleasant café where an arrangement of palms and an active imagination can transport one to an Arabian oasis. I make it my habit to order tea and cake whilst browsing through the newspapers on display.

The purpose of my visit having been settled at the front desk, I picked up a copy of The Times. My favourite is the London Illustrated News, but a heavily-bearded gentleman had pre-empted me, and so I satisfied my unwomanly bloodlust with a section of the Times called Found Drowned. I am repelled by my own morbid curiosity with this endless list of poor and hapless women whose ultimate recourse had been to throw themselves in the Thames. Yesterday there was a total of 58 names, (and this is a daily listing). Some were unidentified, but the majority were simply described as prostitutes - as though that was all they were and all they ever were. Only one woman merited a longer epitaph, the wife of a Wesleyan preacher who had lost all five of her children to scarlet fever. One a week until none were left.

It would seem that prayers were not enough.

There was also scurrilous gossip about a cartoonist, (of all occupations) who had been advising his female models to pose in the nude, for reasons unclear since the finished cartoons were naturally fully clad. His wife certainly found the reasons clear enough, and so there’s a bit of a hullaballoo going on in that particular household. How mortifying for all concerned!

Another story told of a Camden photographer who kept his subjects quiet during the lengthy exposure times by dosing them with laudanum. One lady is currently taking him to the courts due to her subsequent addiction.

There was also alarming news about Mrs Beeton, she of The Book of Household Management fame. I myself browsed a copy several years ago, but I could find no merit in knowing the various ways with mutton, how to make a sponge cake, (although she neglected to mention the eggs), or how to keep one’s husband happy without actually alluding to what really makes one’s husband happy. But the piece in The Times was rather shocking. Subsequent to her death at the age of 28 last year, it transpired that the poor woman had died of syphilis, passed on, no doubt, by her errant husband.

So all is sham and artifice.

The more one reads of fact, the more one realises that fiction exists merely to sanitise it.

As I was drifting up the stairs towards the fiction section, I thought of Etty and Linley and of how rudely healthy they were; of how I would feel if anything were to happen to them. Bristol is a fair-sized city with its own troubles and corruptions, but it is nothing like London - and I found myself glad of it. Glad of my life, in reality. I should stop reading the periodicals, but it is a truth that women are rather drawn to the darker things in life, perhaps because we have such little inclination to indulge in them ourselves.

I was in the mood for some sort of mystery novel. They often disappoint at the end, but the journey is usually scenic. It was while I was browsing the pertinent aisle that I heard voices coming through the wall. Moving closer, I heard a woman’s voice speaking through a high grille that needed dusting. The voice said, ‘Oh, I missed you so much, darling.’

The voice itself was certainly English, but there was something about the ‘R’ in ‘da(r)ling’ that was … curlicued. It put me in mind of an American woman I once briefly met, a cousin of a neighbour who was paying a visit to the ‘old country.’

Clearly she was talking to someone, but all I heard from that end of things was a long sigh and the scrape of a larynx, as if a pleasurable ‘Oooh,’ had been arrested by circumstance. The grille in question shared a party wall with the bank. Felix had once told me there was a grille in the caretaker’s cupboard, and he knew this because the caretaker had once joked that the library was a quiet neighbour - but that he sometimes heard people muttering or sneezing next door.

The woman’s voice got a little louder, and I heard a ‘Shhhh,’ from the other person and then a sort of shuddering release.

I went straight to the kitchens when I returned home. I like to spend time there in the quiet and purposeful activity of Mrs May, discussing all the things I had found in the newspapers that day. Treating servants as equals is not something Mrs Beeton approved of, but that has never been my character. At one point she sighed, (not at my presence but at some pastry that would not roll to her satisfaction), and I remarked that I would know her sigh anywhere. She has five children, all adult now, and has always maintained that she would instantly recognise any sound that came from them, whether it be a sigh, a sneeze or a cough.

Which of course set me to the thing that was troubling me.

Felix returned home at his usual hour and was very affectionate towards myself and the children. In a breezy manner he told me that he had bumped into an old friend from boarding school, recently returned from a year in America with his wife, Marion. He said that his friend, (Jeremy) was the same as ever, but that she had returned ‘quite vulgar.’ He said that women were much freer to speak over there, and I remarked that they would pay the price for it just the same. I asked him how he knew Jeremy’s wife and he waved a dismissive hand. ‘They would occasionally drop into the bank for a chatter,’ he said. ‘She’s a dreadful woman …’

I smiled at that, of course. Men are transparent as bubbles. He told me that he had invited them over for dinner tomorrow, (or today, as I write this), and that he had already spoken to Mrs May. She was to offer nothing more than the usual fare, but added that he would bring extra wine for the table.

He seemed rather worn out after that. He kissed me on the forehead and retired to his study before dinner.

Last night I began reading The Notting Hill Mystery. How the cares of this world so easily surrender to the pages of a good book!

I shall not detail how I spent today, for there is nothing of note to tell. So straight to the dinner I shall go, with the doorbell chiming at exactly the correct time, and little Nettie straightening her bib and cap to answer the door. After a brief ritual of handshaking, back-slapping and cheek-kissing, we retired to the drawing room, where the savoury artistry of Mrs May’s steak and kidney pudding rose from the stairs and enveloped us in anticipation. Jeremy was a pleasant sort, neither one thing or the other, a rather generic gentleman. During the course of the evening, however, it became clear that there was a streak, (mild, perhaps) of brutality in him. A habit of silencing his wife by bringing his glass down a little too hard, and there was sometimes the faintest quiver of a politely restrained hand. Marion did, on occasion, stray a little too far into taking over the conversation. She was pretty, but no prettier than myself to an objective arbiter. She spoke mostly like the Englishwoman she was, but for a habit with the curlicued ‘R.’ It seemed to annoy her husband, but only to a close observer, as I confess to being. As I watched the little glances shared between she and my husband, I felt nothing but dread for them both. Felix was playing a dangerous game, but she was playing a fatal one.

I resolved to speak to him when they had both left, which I have just done.

With the cold from outside still clinging to the hallway, I drew him into the parlour and told him the very probable consequences if he were to continue this affair. Jeremy would not forgive any man, particularly an old school friend. He would divorce his wife and cite Jeremy as co-respondent. It would be reported in the newspapers, and he would lose his position at the bank. We are moderately wealthy, but not enough to maintain unemployment.

I reminded him that Marion’s situation was even more precarious. An adulteress has no rights in law. She would be ejected from the marital home and left to the mercy of any family member so inclined to take her in. Unfortunately for Marion, her parents were both dead and her older sister was estranged from her, whereabouts unknown. They have a daughter who is now six, (all of these details were importunately supplied by the garrulous Marion), and she would certainly lose custody of that child. She would, in short, never be allowed to see her again. The daughter might find herself rejected too, because the daughter of an adulteress was marked with the same scarlet letter. At best, she may be consigned to the attic rooms while Jeremy found himself a new wife and an unblemished bloodline.

Marion would be at the mercy of the streets, and whilst the Thames may boast the largest number of drowned women, there are rivers in Bristol with similar tales to tell.

And all of this, I finished, for a kiss and a fumble at the bank!

Felix was astounded, but he did not deny any of it. He asked me how in God’s name I had discovered it, and I told him that the circulating library appeared to circulate rather more than just books. The dawn crept upon his face: Ah! The caretaker’s cupboard.

And I also reminded him that a single sigh was as capable of betrayal as a spoken sonnet.

Tomorrow morning I shall send a boy with a note to Marion’s house in Clifton. He will go by carriage and bring her back here to me. If she is not there, he will be instructed to wait. I have no intention of threatening her, but I fear that I must frighten her. Her giddy and rather guileless soul must be made to understand the mortal danger of her position, not for my sake, but solely for hers. She will think me a cold fish, I am sure, but that is not my position. I am very fond of Felix, and she is not nearly irritating enough to wish calamity upon.

More so than that, I have secrets of my own.

After Marion, I shall go to the library and meet with Miss Lumb, Miss Hannah Lumb. In the oasis café we shall entwine our ankles beneath our skirts and stroke hands in the way that women can without arousing suspicion. We shall pour over the newspapers of the day. Our minds will be engaged, but our bodies, limb by limb and fold by fold, will tremble at what is to come. It has taken many years to reach this state of autonomy, where our mouths speak and observe all formality, whilst our bodies echo the mannerisms of a dormant volcano whose heat is obdurately disguised until it must, at intervals, erupt.

She wears Banquet de la Reine like no one else wears it. If not for my children, she would be my everything.

I suspect that tomorrow night Felix shall come to my room in some display of gratitude. He shall be quick and considerate, as always, and then he will kiss me and retire to his own. It is far better he does this with his own wife than any other man’s. And it is certainly better than taking a doxy from the docks, as the redoubtable Mrs Beeton would tell him, if only the wretched woman could.

I do not know when I shall write in my journal again. Indeed, I do not think I shall. Such things as I describe are commonplace, and yet forbidden to tell. This will not change in my lifetime. All the pages that women write will be lost to the flames, the water, or the far flung corners of mouldering attics where the words will rot in the dark.

Yet I am left with the unsettling feeling that not to write, even for one’s own pleasure, is to practice cowardice: that when faced with the truth or posterity, we women will surrender both without a battle fought.

And there is no cure for that, in this life or the next.