Fevvers had won the friendship of many men of science. Walser recalled how the young woman had entertained the curiosity of the entire Royal College of Surgeons for three hours without so much as unbuttoning her bodice for them, and discussed navigation in birds with a full meeting of the Royal Society with such infernal assurance and so great a wealth of scientific terminology that not one single professor had dared be rude enough to question her on the extent of her personal experience.
‘Oh, that Toussaint!’ said Lizzie. ‘How he can move a crowd! Such eloquence, the man has! Oh, if all those with such things to say had mouths! And yet it is the lot of those who toil and suffer to be dumb. But, consider the dialectic of it, sir,’ she continued with freshly crackling vigour, ‘how it was, as it were, the white hand of the oppressor who carved open the aperture of speech in the very throat you could say that it had, in the first place, rendered dumb, and –’
Fevvers shot Lizzie a look of such glazing fury that the witch hushed, suddenly as she’d started. Walser raised his mental eyebrows. More to the chaperone than met the eye! But Fevvers lassooed him with her narrative and dragged him along with her before he’d had a chance to ask Lizzie if –
‘Before he met up with Madame Schreck, sir, Toussaint used to work the shows at fairs, what they call on your side of the herring-pond the Ten-in-Ones, sir. So he was a connoisseur of degradation and always maintained it was those fine gentlemen who paid down their sovereigns to poke and pry at us who were the unnatural ones, not we. For what is “natural” and “unnatural”, sir? The mould in which the human form is cast is exceedingly fragile. Give it the slightest tap with your fingers and it breaks. And God alone knows why, Mr Walser, but the men who came to Madame Schreck’s were one and all quite remarkable for their ugliness; their faces suggested that he who cast the human form in the first place did not have his mind on the job.
‘Toussaint could hear us perfectly well, of course, and often jotted down encouraging words and sometimes little maxims on the pad he always carried with him and he was as great a comfort and an inspiration to us in our confinement as now he will be to a greater world.’
Lizzie nodded emphatically. Fevvers went smoothly forward.
‘Madame Schreck organised her museum, thus: downstairs, in what had used to be the wine cellar, she’d had a sort of vault or crypt constructed, with wormy beams overhead and nasty damp flagstones underfoot, and this place was known as “Down Below”, or else, “The Abyss”. The girls was all made to stand in stone niches cut out of the slimy walls, except for the Sleeping Beauty, who remained prone, since proneness was her speciality. And there were little curtains in front and, in front of the curtains, a little lamp burning. These were her “profane altars”, as she used to call them.
‘Some gent would knock at the front door, thumpetythump, a soft, deathly thunder due to that crepe muffler on the knocker. Toussaint would unbolt and let him in, relieve him of his topcoat and topper and put him in the little receiving-room, where the punter would rummage among the clobber in the big wardrobe and rig himself out in a cassock, or a ballet-dancer’s frock, or whatever he fancied. But the one I liked least was the executioner’s hood; there was a judge who come regular who always fancied that. Yet all he ever wanted was a weeping girl to spit at him. And he’d pay a hundred guineas for the privilege! Except, on those days when he’d put on the black cap himself, then he’d take himself off upstairs, to what Madame Schreck called the “Black Theatre”, and there, Albert/Albertina put a noose around his neck and give it a bit of a pull but not enough to hurt, whereupon he’d ejaculate and give him/her a fiver tip, but La Schreck always took charge of that.
‘When the client had
‘Oh, that Toussaint!’ said Lizzie. ‘How he can move a crowd! Such eloquence, the man has! Oh, if all those with such things to say had mouths! And yet it is the lot of those who toil and suffer to be dumb. But, consider the dialectic of it, sir,’ she continued with freshly crackling vigour, ‘how it was, as it were, the white hand of the oppressor who carved open the aperture of speech in the very throat you could say that it had, in the first place, rendered dumb, and –’
Fevvers shot Lizzie a look of such glazing fury that the witch hushed, suddenly as she’d started. Walser raised his mental eyebrows. More to the chaperone than met the eye! But Fevvers lassooed him with her narrative and dragged him along with her before he’d had a chance to ask Lizzie if –
‘Before he met up with Madame Schreck, sir, Toussaint used to work the shows at fairs, what they call on your side of the herring-pond the Ten-in-Ones, sir. So he was a connoisseur of degradation and always maintained it was those fine gentlemen who paid down their sovereigns to poke and pry at us who were the unnatural ones, not we. For what is “natural” and “unnatural”, sir? The mould in which the human form is cast is exceedingly fragile. Give it the slightest tap with your fingers and it breaks. And God alone knows why, Mr Walser, but the men who came to Madame Schreck’s were one and all quite remarkable for their ugliness; their faces suggested that he who cast the human form in the first place did not have his mind on the job.
‘Toussaint could hear us perfectly well, of course, and often jotted down encouraging words and sometimes little maxims on the pad he always carried with him and he was as great a comfort and an inspiration to us in our confinement as now he will be to a greater world.’
Lizzie nodded emphatically. Fevvers went smoothly forward.
‘Madame Schreck organised her museum, thus: downstairs, in what had used to be the wine cellar, she’d had a sort of vault or crypt constructed, with wormy beams overhead and nasty damp flagstones underfoot, and this place was known as “Down Below”, or else, “The Abyss”. The girls was all made to stand in stone niches cut out of the slimy walls, except for the Sleeping Beauty, who remained prone, since proneness was her speciality. And there were little curtains in front and, in front of the curtains, a little lamp burning. These were her “profane altars”, as she used to call them.
‘Some gent would knock at the front door, thumpetythump, a soft, deathly thunder due to that crepe muffler on the knocker. Toussaint would unbolt and let him in, relieve him of his topcoat and topper and put him in the little receiving-room, where the punter would rummage among the clobber in the big wardrobe and rig himself out in a cassock, or a ballet-dancer’s frock, or whatever he fancied. But the one I liked least was the executioner’s hood; there was a judge who come regular who always fancied that. Yet all he ever wanted was a weeping girl to spit at him. And he’d pay a hundred guineas for the privilege! Except, on those days when he’d put on the black cap himself, then he’d take himself off upstairs, to what Madame Schreck called the “Black Theatre”, and there, Albert/Albertina put a noose around his neck and give it a bit of a pull but not enough to hurt, whereupon he’d ejaculate and give him/her a fiver tip, but La Schreck always took charge of that.
‘When the client had
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