The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens (5 page)

After their mother's death, the children were taken in as an act of charity by a wealthy landowner. Frederick Clarke and his wife lived on a manor in Leicestershire. It was intended that Florence and Christopher would be servants at an older age.

Florence was taught to read. She was also taught that she was different from the master's children because she
was an orphan and was from a lower class. They looked down on her and reminded her often of her status. In the little world in which children exist, there is nothing so finely perceived and felt as injustice. Through no fault of her own, there was a shadow on Florence's life. But she vowed that she would be industrious and kind, do good deeds, and be deserving of love.

As a child, Florence was pretty. Then she passed through the state of weeds common to girls of a certain age and burst into flower. By her thirteenth birthday, nature had painted her more beautifully than any artist's hand could render. Her long red hair hung free in ringlets. Her blue eyes sparkled like jewels. Putting her beauty into words was like trying to hold a ray of sunlight in one's hand. The master of the house rebuked a business partner for suggesting that Florence would be a desirable sexual pleasure when a bit older. He was already aware of the possibility and thinking of time and place himself.

The manor was fully staffed with a butler, housekeeper, valet, maids, cooks, coachman, groom, stable boy, footmen, and gardeners. A governess assisted the mistress where the rearing and education of the children was concerned. A nurse tended to the babies.

Florence was assigned chores as an aide to the governess. Christopher worked in the gardens. Together, they were friends with James Frost, who had come to the manor when Florence was nine. He was also an orphan and was one year older than she was.

James, Christopher, and Florence explored the mysteries of the world together.

“I caught a frog in the stream this morning,” James told them one day. “It had two eyes.”

“All frogs have two eyes,” Florence said, laughing.

“Please, let me finish. The frog led me to further thought. All people and animals have two eyes. All birds and all bugs have two eyes. It is always two. Never one or three. Why do you think God made it that way?”

When it rained, Florence and James loved to watch the falling drops and smell the fresh scents. When the wind blew, they delighted in fancying what it said. They walked hand in hand in the sunshine through flowery meadows. The dew sparkled more brightly on the green leaves, the air rustled among them with sweeter music, and the sky looked more blue and bright when they were together. They loved each other with greater purity than can be found in the best love of a later time in life. They made no more provision for growing older than they did for growing younger.

On the day that changed Florence's life forever, she was walking with James in the meadow. It was scant weeks past her fourteenth birthday.

“I see no reason why I should be a servant girl forever,” Florence told him. “I want to be a lady. And you should be a gentleman.”

She glowed with the grace of young beauty. The sun and moon and stars were made to light her.

“If I was ever to be a lady, I would give you a blue coat the colour of the sky with diamond buttons, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.”

James was young and handsome with a keen dark eye and a heart filled with every pure and true affection that a young woman could cherish.

“If you were a lady, all I would ask for is your heart.”

He would forever remember that day in the meadow
and the flowers in Florence's hair. Forget-me-nots. As if forget-me-nots were needed for him to remember her.

She looked at him with eyes that were radiant and true. He returned her gaze with eyes that were honest and beaming with hope.

Her lips were ripe and made to be kissed.

So he kissed her.

That night, the master summoned Florence to his lair. The attractive little bud was flowering with the blush of womanhood. It was time to take her.

He offered her wine. She drank half a glass out of polite obligation, then stopped. She did not like the feel of the moment. He suggested that she drink more. She declined.

Then he took her forcefully for his pleasure.

Florence fought to preserve her honour, but resistance was futile. She cried out for help. No one came to save her. She remembered now hearing similar cries from other servant girls in the house at night and the haunted look in their eyes the following morning.

When it was done, she had lost what no one could give back to her. He had taken what could never be returned. She slept not at all that night. In the morning, the master's valet handed her a small silk purse with three gold sovereigns in it.

Florence now had a father. She was a daughter of shame. She stayed sick in her room all that day. Her hopes of growing up to be a lady lay crushed in her breast. When night fell, she packed up her few belongings and fled from her childhood home.

She told no one what had happened. She did not want
James or Christopher to know of her degradation. It was better to disappear than to have them know.

She walked for hours, then stopped to rest in a church. Not many people care to sleep in a church. I do not mean at sermon time, when it is often done. I speak of at night and alone. The angry wind has a dismal way of wandering round and round and moaning as it goes, of trying the windows and doors and seeking out crevices by which to enter. Once it has got in, it wails and howls and stalks through the aisles, glides round the pillars, soars up to the roof, flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. It has an awful voice, the wind in a church at midnight.

After three days' travel, Florence arrived in London. With her ever-diminishing three sovereigns, she bought the food necessary to survive. Half a loaf was better than crumbs. Crumbs were better than nothing. She joined the working poor, whose hands are hardened by toil. A decent woman spoke to her about needlework and lodging. She found a position as a seamstress for a dressmaker.

Florence's new home was a large whitewashed room behind a dress shop shared with eight other women. The stifled air and dim light were what one expects in such a situation. Each woman had a shelf on which to place her personal belongings. Large hooks fixed in the wall beneath the shelves served as the hanging place for mats and blankets. There was a fireplace and a long table at which the women sat on wooden benches for dinner.

Florence worked early and late. She strained her eyes until it was too dark to see the threads, then lit a candle
and worked longer. It was cheerless, never-ending toil; not to live well, but to scrape together enough to live.

She hid her beauty as best she could. But in due course, the proprietor of the shop took notice of her shape and general appearance and decided that Florence would look appealing in a low dress with long sleeves made full in the skirts with four tucks in the bottom. And in just about anything else, for that matter.

It became part of her duties to exhibit the dresses for customers.

Men looked at her often when she ventured onto the streets, but she wanted no part of them. She had been ruined. Let the lips of no honest man touch hers ever again.

She thought often of James Frost and wished that he would have a good life. She truly loved him.

Time passed.

A woman named Hortense Webster came to the shop. She was forty years old and quite portly with an expanding stomach and ample bust. Her jewels bespoke her wealth.

Hortense talked with Florence in a friendly way. She asked about her circumstances and invited her to tea. Florence was flattered that so fine a lady took an interest in her.

All the while at tea, Hortense was studying Florence. The young woman's voice was sweet and musical. She spoke nicely. Her manner was timid, but she had self-possession and control over her emotions. Although made up in a plain way, she was beautiful with an aura of innocence about her.

The longer that Hortense studied Florence, the more she saw a fortune in her beauty.

“When there are two parties to a bargain,” Hortense told Florence, “it is right that the interests of both sides be met.”

Then Hortense Webster offered Florence a new life, one of ease and comfort. All that would be required of her, from time to time, would be to lay with a man.

The sale of women has been a part of every society from the beginning of history. It has been widely condemned as an affront to God, yet it has always flourished. Prostitution is older than any of the world's Holy Books. It is spoken of in the Bible and the written record of every culture.

Man is endowed by nature with passions that must be gratified. No blame can be attached to him who seeks a woman of pleasure to fulfill his needs. This is the rationale that has always been used to justify the conduct of the purchaser in the transaction. Men and women of all classes in every age have known the pleasures and degradation of prostitution. It has never been, and never will be, eradicated in any place or time.

Some women are drawn to prostitution by a love of sex and excitement, but they are few in number. For most, it is poverty that draws them in. They have lived in filth and squalor with four or five siblings in a single room. Perhaps they worked for pitifully low wages as a shop girl or domestic servant. Men set upon them
anyway, so they decided that they might as well receive payment for their favours. A common prostitute can earn in a night what she might otherwise earn in several weeks of honest labour. An uncommon prostitute can earn considerably more.

Prostitution was in full view in the 1830s in London. At the lowest level, frowsily dressed women walked the streets of poor neighbourhoods. They brought men to rooms for rent or performed their acts in alleys and other public places. The same women congregated in public taverns and foul dens where vice was closely packed and beds were available on the floor above or in a building nearby.

More presentable women also solicited in public. They were seen in carriages or leisurely strolling on promenades in the park, elegantly dressed, attracting attention by the striking colours and provocative cut of their attire. They wore satin bonnets trimmed with ribbons and ornamental flowers, their cheeks red with rouge as they flirted with their eyes. They could stare at a man in a way that was innocent yet inviting. By their walk, the manner in which they held their bodies, and their countless gestures, they could turn a man away or signal to him, “Yes, I am what you think I am.”

They were a common sight at public events, these ladies. At dance halls and, most notably, at the theatre. They congregated at theatre bars and moved from box to box. In some theatres, it was understood that the upper tier was a place for solicitation. A woman who attended theatre alone was presumed to be a whore.

Some women of pleasure leave the trade to marry or pursue a different means of earning. But for most,
prostitution is a slippery slope to a ruinous end. Syphilis and gonorrhoea are its twin plagues.

And there is a greater horror. Child brothels existed in London in the 1830s, often patronised because of the ignorant belief that sexual relations with a virgin would cure venereal disease. The age of consent in England was twelve. Many of the girls pressed into such service were twelve or thirteen. Some were eleven. Across the ocean in New York, the age of consent was ten.

Hortense Webster was disinterested in all of the common and uncommon forms of prostitution mentioned above. Her business was transacted out of public sight in the most exclusive kind of brothel, a private establishment known as The Abbey.

The Abbey was a three-story house in a good neighbourhood among private residences. It replicated an aristocratic club. The door was kept locked. Returning clientele and new gentlemen who came with a letter of reference were admitted.

Hortense's patrons were wealthy men, often married, who were willing to spend lavishly for beautiful women, luxurious surroundings, and discreet privacy. The most respectable men of London, including an occasional member of Parliament, made their way to her door.

Every furnishing and decorative touch in the parlour was designed to appeal to the senses, arouse desire, and remind guests that they were there to spend freely and have a good time. The walls were ornamented with hangings of rich silk on choice specimens of French paper, enriched with gilded cornices. Velvet curtains guarded the windows. Two ornate mirrors reflected the
glow of candles. A dazzling crystal chandelier hung from above. Sofas and more intimate seating invited coupling. A plush carpet covered the floor.