Hottentot Venus (23 page)

—Shabby as we are, said Master Taylor, his bright eyes blinking, we contrive to make a good show when we enter a town. There are handbills and drums and maybe a piper. We lodge in inns or the houses of trades-men, use barns to store our properties and put on our costumes. We raise a tent with banners in a meadow or a marketplace if there is no theater or town hall. Or we have even taken a large room in an inn and turned it into a players’ house by suspending green draperies from the ceiling (the color of players’ curtains must be green). Hard as this life is, I’d have no other . . . If I have money, he laughed, I lend it. If I have none, I do without. We players are a set of merry undone dogs, he laughed again, and though we often want the means of life, we are seldom without the means of mirth. We play the country fairs and the houses of country squires alongside the acrobats, freaks, musicians and singers, ropedancers, fortune-tellers and keepers of strange animals such as bears and Hottentots . . .

14

Why would the actual races not be modifications of those ancient races that are found amongst fossils, modifications which would have been shown by local circumstances and the change of climate, and explained by the long succession of years?

—BARON GEORGES LÉOPOLD CUVIER,
Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals
on the Surface of the Globe

Crooked Fire, the English month of April, 1812. So this was the man who now owned one fourth of me, I thought. He was short and stocky without being fat, although he had a potbelly and his legs were bowed. But his face was the handsomest I had ever seen, even more beautiful than John Kemble’s, and his eyes were an unearthly green, as green as African orchids. His eyes as well as his mouth never stopped laughing, and despite myself, I was caught up in his mirth and could not resist his good humor. He was also, as we all would find out, a softhearted crook, ready with any scheme to fleece the public or cheat at cards, for which he had an uncontrollable passion. Except when he was in costume, he always wore a green scarf wrapped around his neck, a gold earring and, on his left little finger, a signet ring bearing a coat of arms he claimed was his. He was, he told us one night, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Carnarvon and had been born at Highclere—then he changed it to the Earl of Moira of Donington Park in Leicestershire. No one believed him, but we all loved listening to his extravagant lies.

After Alice became my temporary servant, she and Master Taylor would try to outdo one another with outrageous tales of their hardships and childhood. This is how I learned that Alice was only a few years older than me, although she looked twenty years more. She was perhaps five feet five and had sloping shoulders, wide hips and ample breasts that she bound in linen. A year before, her father had died a violent death, crushed under an avalanche of tons of clay slush that had gushed from the brick factory kiln near Bridestone, where he worked. Her younger sister, who had worked in the Wedgwood porcelain factory, had died of lead poisoning and her older brothers and sisters all worked in the kilns or coal mines of Manchester. Alice had been taken out of the nail factory, where she had been put to work at seven years old, and allowed to attend school until she was twelve. She had learned to read and write and count in the hope that she might enter the convent of St. Jeremy just outside of the town as a servant girl and perhaps even a novice. But, she explained, her religious education had taken a bad turn because her natural skepticism and rebellious nature were not the clay to make a nun. She had resisted religion in her nunnery just as I had resisted reading in my orphanage. Yet we both agreed the nunnery and the orphanage had been the only safety we had ever known in life. When it was decided she was not fit for a nunnery, Alice was sent into service in the manor house of the Duke of Chester. There she began her life of service as a weeder in the vast Italian-style gardens of the park, then she worked as a scullery maid, a kitchen maid, a laundry maid and finally as a dairy maid. The duke employed forty-six servants, sixteen of whom were upper servants divided into many grades and ranks. Thus she had learned the workings of a great house from top to bottom, just as I had learned to keep Mistress Alya’s mansion.

—There were special china cloths and dusters for housemaids, she explained, glass cloths for the butler, pocket cloths for the footman, lamp cloths for the porter, horn cloths for the servants’ hall boy. The dustpans were all numbered; each housemaid had her own and had to learn how to hold it together with a candle in one hand so that she could use the brush with the other. Alice also had to learn to polish the metal fittings on furniture with fine sand, how to polish paintwork with cream dressing, how to sweep carpets with damp tea leaves, how to remove old polish with vinegar, mix new beeswax with turpentine; how to wash high ceilings with soda and water while standing on a stepladder nine feet high; how to dust brocaded walls and rub them down with tissue paper and silk dusters; how to unstring and scrub venetian blinds; how to take up and beat carpets; how to whiten corridors with pipe clay and spread French chalk on hardwood floors before a ball; how to make a bed, how to lay a tea table, remember at what time sunlight came into the various rooms so that the blinds could be drawn to protect the furniture or that windows could be opened to air the room . . .

—I could tell you a thing or two about cleaning a house . . . Ever have to tie up a heifer’s tail to keep her rump clean?

—You’re joking, laughed Alice.

—My brush is my sword; my broom, my weapon/Sleep I know not, nor any
repose . . .

—And for that I earned five pounds a year as an under-housemaid, laughed Alice. But I was on my way to being an upstairs maid when one of the duke’s sons caught me under the stairs, raped me and got me with child. I was dismissed as soon as the steward found out about my pregnancy and thrown out without a reference. Without a reference there was no hope of finding another job in service. After the baby came, I found work as a wet nurse and had to leave my child in the care of my mother. I named him Eric. When he was eighteen months old, he died during the week of Lent. I couldn’t get home to give him a proper funeral for a month because my mistress had guests. I never went back. I got a job in a textile factory working the loom, quite a step down from service in a great house. I found a hovel to rent and moved out of my mother’s shack in the brickfields where she worked. My mother had given birth to twelve children, five of which survived until adulthood. Just after my father died, she told me she was pregnant again and could no longer keep my little brother Victor at home. What was I to do? I told her I would take him in. But I lost my job at the mill after an accident damaged my loom. The superintendent fired me without pay and once again without a reference. I was out on the street. I’d been looking for work for months. I’d put Victor out to beg, that’s when I saw your circus caravan arriving.

Alice had had a life more wretched than a Hottentot’s. She had lost her baby. She too was an orphan. She was my sister under the skin. I vowed to keep her close to me and find a solution for Victor.

—But if you come with us, what will happen to Victor?

—But he can come too! He doesn’t eat much and he can be a freak! He has a
big
hump and spindly legs, we can make him into something. He can sleep under my bed. I will take care of him, I promise.

Master Taylor had the answer.

—Well, he said, there are three types of freaks: a natural-born freak, a made freak and a fake freak. Our little Victor here would fall into the category of a “made” freak, if he’s willing to learn the trade and endure a little pain. People need thrills, they need to wonder about somethin’, including the marvels of nature. This is what I call show business. Show business is the art of catering to the slenderly learned and common sort. It is the same as accounts of murders, executions, witchcraft and other prodigies. The English are a nation of starers and they have a taste for monsters that cuts across all classes. Strange sights and monstermongers have never been more popular and all kinds of deformation bring fame and fortune. Now our little prodigy here is going to have a fine, monstrous birth. I am going to stick a giant turtleshell, which I know
exactly
where to find, on his
natural
hump and produce a wondrous little turtle-boy whose head peeks in and out of his body as if by magic and his skinny legs curl up inside his shell jus’ like a real turtle when he crawls . . . With a shell, Victor will be a sensation, he’s small and scrawny enough with his spindly legs to convince anybody he was born a turtle! Let’s see your face now. Yes. A little coal dust around the eyes, a fake beak for a nose, a scaly neck and you’ll be perfect! I agree to take him along if he’s willing to become a player! He must never let his guard down in public or allow himself to be seen as anything else than Victor the turtle-boy . . . When I finish with him, they’ll all be singing:

Come neere, good Christians all,
Behold a monster rare,
Whose monstrous shape no doubt foretells
God’s wrath we should beware . . .

Alice jumped for joy. It was a wonderful idea.

—But he’s got to be funny, see? The people want to laugh at terror, not run from it! The people need to laugh at him, continued Victor’s new manager.

And, I thought to myself, Yes, Victor, you must survive their laughter. And that was the hardest. Without my daily pint of gin, I could never have survived.

Now that I was in Manchester, I determined to find my beloved Reverend Freehouseland. Alice and I eventually found his grave in the quiet, frozen, treeless cemetery behind the gray stone bell tower of Christ’s Church in the parish of Littleburn. Large flakes of snow began to fall and I drew my long red cape around me. As we stood, our heads bowed, a new reverend, who resembled him, approached us.

—You are strangers here, he said. Are you new workers at the mill?

—No, Reverend, we are circus people on tour. We will be here only a few weeks. But this woman, Sarah, was a slave to the Reverend Freehouseland at the Cape Colony. She was freed by him before he died. She came today to find his grave and pay her respects.

—An African? A member of Cecil’s mission? At the Cape?

—Yes, from the Cape of Good Hope. A lady from the Cape of Good Hope, repeated Alice.

—Well, this is where he lies in peace. He pointed to the gravestone:

CECIL JAMES FREEHOUSELAND
Beloved son, servant of God
African missionary to the Heathen.
Savior of Their Souls
1756–1796
Psalm XV

—So you are a Christian? the priest said, turning to me.

—No, Reverend, I was never baptized.

—It is never too late, he said. Allow me to instruct you while you sojourn here, as a tribute to my old friend Cecil.

—You knew him?

—We were in the seminary together. We are both from Manchester, native sons, so to speak, who traveled to far-off places, I to China, Cecil to Africa . . .

—I wouldn’t read the Book, I confessed. It wouldn’t talk to me.

—What book?

—The Bible.

—Well, he paused, perhaps you had your reasons.

—Yes, I couldn’t read.

At this, he laughed, the sound swishing out of him like the wind.

—Who are you?

—Well, let’s say, Reverend, interrupted Alice, Sarah has traveled far and wide because of her extraordinary body. People in England had never seen anyone like her before, neither her color nor her shape. Most have never seen a black person.

—People pay to see her because her skin is black?

—That partly. And for other things as well. She is famous in London. She is known as the Hottentot Venus.

—And you travel the countryside like this, alone?

—No, Reverend, I answered. We travel with my two masters, a dog, a troupe of actors, a few musicians . . .

—And you are a slave to these men?

—Not a slave. Yet they own me. I have made a sacred marriage contract with one of them. The others are his partners.

But the reverend didn’t understand.

—You understand, child, that living with a man who is not your husband is a sin.

—A sin?

—But, Reverend, she is chaste, protested Alice.

—Nevertheless. It is unseemly. I don’t think Father Cecil would approve.

—Then save her, Reverend, said Alice.

—I intend to, Miss . . .

—Alice Unicorn.

—It is the least I can do for Cecil. Why, I couldn’t walk past his grave if I didn’t at least try.

—He left me ten pounds in his will but it was never paid to me by his family.

—And you came all this way here to claim it?

—I came to escape from the Cape. To be free, to earn money to save my clan.

—The Freehouselands are all good Christians.

—Perhaps, but also thieves.

—You were but a child then.

—All the more shame.

—Come with me, child. The reverend turned and started towards the church. I was glad Alice was with me. She knew the ways of the English. I would have been frightened all by myself. Inside the church, the ceiling rose high above my head and curved even higher in stone arches of great beauty. The aisles flickered with lit candles, the polished wooden benches reflected in the gloom. At the end of the long hall was a simple altar draped in white linen and a high wooden pulpit on which hung a gold crucifix.

—Can you read at all, Sarah?

—A little. A fairy taught me. And now, Alice is teaching me.

—Well, if you can read and understand the prayer book I’m going to give you, and answer a few simple questions, I can baptize you and welcome you into the flock of Jesus Christ as a Christian and an Episcopalian. Would you like that? It means that you can no longer live in sin with those men without an act of holy matrimony.

—But I’m their servant.

—And I’m her chaperone, Alice lied.

—Nevertheless, said the priest sternly, the Church of England would not approve.