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Copyright jeanne_d_artois June 2010
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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Laundry Tale Seven: Bustling
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The main attraction of the former laundry room, which is my workroom as a potter, is Martha, the resident ghost. As a child I would sit on the scrubbed table and ask Martha to tell me a story. She always did. When I became an adult, she told me about incidents in the lives of people at the Hall. Each time I became a participant in the story and experienced the events exactly as that person had. This is part of the series of those adult stories. It can be read as a stand-alone story.
One of my regular customers came with an unusual request. She wanted me to produce a porcelain figurine from photographs of one of her Victorian ancestors. I had produced figurines before using standard moulds but I had never tried to produce a realistic likeness of a specific individual. I could reproduce photographs on plates and other pottery items. I had sketched likenesses on to plates before firing. I had moulded full size three-dimensional heads after considerable practice and several initial failures. I ought to be capable of moulding and painting a figurine. I just hadn't done one.
We discussed a possible price. The customer was willing to pay me a reasonable amount just to try. If I produced a successful figurine, she would want ten copies to distribute to her relations at Christmas. She would pay me at least one hundred pounds for each of them. A thousand pounds would be a very useful sum, covering my basic overheads for at least six months.
She had provided me with several copies of the photographs on paper and a CD of them. One photograph had been hand-coloured. Although it had faded, I could still work out the colours of the lady's skin, hair and clothes. In every photograph, she was wearing the extreme bustle fashionable in 1885. The dresses varied but the basic shape of the bustle hadn't.
That evening I sat down at my drafting desk with enlarged prints of the photos spread out. On my sketchpad I had doodled several views for a figurine about twelve inches high. I sat back in my chair, thinking.
I heard Martha's voice inside my head.
"She's got a big backside, hasn't she?"
"It was fashionable then," I replied. "Not for long. It soon looked ridiculous."
"I know. They were a pain for the maids to keep in shape. Ironing the dresses was fiddly work."
"I can appreciate that, Martha. What I can't see at the moment is how that dress would look in the round. I have several seated pictures from the front, one standing with her body slightly turned, and a couple of her facing straight at the camera. The bustle is obvious because it is wider than her waist but..."
"In your clothes box from The Hall you have a bustle from that era. Why not try it on your mannequin?"
"Why hadn't I thought of that?"
"That's why you need me. There is a silk petticoat and I think there are petticoats and a dress that goes over the bustle. Go and get them. I'll be here when you return."
I should have been suspicious. I suppose I was too tired to think straight. As a ghost, Martha can be with me anywhere. She doesn't have to wait for me. She is just a voice in my head even if a voice that can persuade me to experience an alternate reality.
Of course she was right. In my collection of historic clothing from The Hall there was a bustle of the right shape. Next to it was a thick black silk petticoat and two cotton ones, all with added material at the back to cover the bustle. Hanging up in the old wardrobe was a grey serge walking dress. The train was bunched on the floor of the wardrobe. It was very heavy. I draped it around my shoulders as I carried the bustle and petticoats back to my workroom.
"Blast!" I blurted as I realised that my mannequin wasn't in the workroom.
"You don't need it yet," Martha's voice said, "just try the bustle on yourself and I'll tell you a story about it. You are too tired to plan a figurine this evening."
As usual, she was right. I stripped to my bra and sensible cotton panties. Martha's expert advice helped me to fit the bustle correctly. Without her I wouldn't have been able to dress the mannequin.
The bustle felt odd. Wires sewn into two arcs of quilted padding shaped a silken hood at the top. The rest was a skeleton of tapes with three semicircular hoops. My backside fitted into the hood. Long tapes wound around my waist tied at my back. Tapes attached to the three hoops tied around my thighs and below my knees.
Once the bustle was secure I tried swinging it. It slipped to one side as if I had a large bum bag on a hip. I tied it tighter. My legs were restricted but the bustle stayed behind, where it should be. I wriggled into the black petticoat and the two outer cotton petticoats.
The dress was very heavy with a double layer in the skirt. The thick serge was silk lined. The bodice had a row of functional buttons from the low neck to the waist but laced at the back. I couldn't fasten it myself. Whoever had owned it must have needed a maid or female relation to dress and undress. Martha's ghostly fingers deftly laced the dress around me.
"Try walking," she suggested.
I stood up. I nearly overbalanced. The bustle pushed my chest forward, exaggerating my bust. I felt as if I had acquired a camel's hump behind me. Once I started walking I soon acquired the knack of arching my back to compensate for the bustle. I seemed to have grown a couple of cup sizes. The skirt's short train followed me but I was dragging a heavy weight. I had to brace my shoulders to take the strain.
"Now sit," Martha ordered. "Hitch the bustle up."
I perched on the edge of my chair. The bustle folded up behind me with a large bunch of the dress's material in the small of my back.
"Comfortable? Then I'll tell you a story about this dress's owner."
I wasn't really comfortable. As Martha began to tell her story I pulled at the skirt and wriggled.
"This dress belonged to Alison. She is one of your great-great aunts. She was wearing this dress when she became engaged to Stewart. He was a distant cousin who was visiting with his parents. He and Alison seemed to have similar tastes. One Sunday he returned, on his own and asked Alison if she would walk to church with him. She did, wearing this bustle and dress for the first time, and on the way back to The Hall Stewart proposed..."
As usual, when Martha started to tell a story about past people at The Hall I began to experience what the main female character felt. Perhaps it is because Martha's story seems to be right inside my head.
It was a glorious Spring day as we came from the church after morning service. My hand was resting lightly on Stewart's crooked arm. As we passed friends and neighbours Stewart would raise his hat and I would bob a light curtsey. Each time I was conscious of the drag of my heavy skirt and the unfamiliar movement of my bustle.
Stewart put his other hand over mine.
"Shall we take the footpath past the woods?"
"Why not?" I replied as lightly as I could although I couldn't stop a faint blush. I knew that Stewart had spent an hour with my father last weekend.
We passed through the kissing gate. I had to hitch my bustle up as I negotiated the gate. I couldn't make that into the elegant movement recommended by the Lady magazine. Stewart even had the effrontery to grin as I pushed my bustle back into place.
"Don't you think it's a silly fashion?" he asked.
