Bannon House
Abyford
Perthshire
20th November 1896
Dear Polly and Sophia, Girls, please write to me at once and tell me how you are. I am so lonely I could die. I have been at my grandmother’s house for FOUR MONTHS now and absolutely NOTHING has happened. Grandmother sees nobody, visits nobody, goes nowhere. I am expected to wait upon her hand and foot — fetch her smelling salts, take her letters to the post, read aloud to her, take dictation. I am absolutely wretched.
I know she does not intend for me to marry. She said to me, “So nice to have a granddaughter to keep house. Much more suitable than a paid companion.” I do not keep house, though. Her housekeeper, Sarah, does everything and always has done. I tried ordering food when I first came here — I got the big book of recipes down from the kitchen shelf and looked through it, trying to find interesting things to eat. But Sarah and Grandmother soon put me in my place. “We have chop on Monday,” said Sarah. “And mutton on Tuesday. And on Wednesdays, your grandmother is partial to Irish stew.” She went on like this through all the days of the week. And that was that! I am not a housekeeper. I am a nobody.
I cannot quite believe I am saying this, but I would give anything to be back at school with you all. Even needlework class and gymnastics would be better than a small Scottish village in the middle of nowhere! Oh, to be walking down to the grocer’s with Polly on one arm and Sophia on the other. Oh, to lie in our bedroom giggling together after lights-out. Oh, to have someone to talk to who is not Grandmother or the servants! Sixteen years my aunt Lucy lived here! I think I shall die of boredom.
Sophia, write and tell me
everything about the Season. Have you met any handsome men yet? Are you in love? How I wish I had an aunt who was an aristocrat! Please, marry a baronet for my sake and tell him you cannot be parted from your beloved Tirzah. You could employ me as your hermit. I would be perfectly happy to sit in a grotto in the grounds of your castle, spouting riddles for the visiting gentry. I would see more life there than I do here. Polly, tell me about all your brothers and sisters. How is working life? Do you go to many dances in Liverpool?
My arm is tired with all this writing. I’ve been thinking — all this time, I’ve written you a letter apiece, and I’ve mostly written the same thing in each of them. But now you’ve gone to London, Sophia, I suppose you won’t have much time for letter writing. Why don’t we just write each other one letter apiece? I am going to put this one in an envelope addressed to Sophia, and then Sophia, when you write back, write a letter to both of us and post it to Polly in an envelope with my letter inside. Do you see? That way we need only write one letter each. I cannot separate the two of you in my head anyway. I think of us always as a trio, all cuddled up together in our little dormitory room at school. Oh, I miss you both so much! Please say you’ll fall in with my scheme. It will make me feel like you’re not so far away.
Your sister in misery and exile, Tirzah 12 Wimpole Street
Mayfair
London
24th November 1896
Dear Polly and Tirzah, Firstly — my aunt Eliza is not an aristocrat. She just married my uncle Simon, who is the younger son of a baron and therefore an Honourable — which means his father was an aristocrat, I suppose. My aunt Eliza is decidedly middle-class, and she’s horribly aware of it. She is always talking about “darling Grandpapa’s house,” and poor Uncle Simon looks frightfully sick whenever she does so. He doesn’t like to tell her that it’s not the done thing to call your in-laws “Grandpapa” or boast about your country houses. She is not very pleased about me being here in my homemade ball gowns, looking so obviously the poor relation. She keeps talking about her darling sister who made a rather unfortunate match to a drawing master. I do call it unkind. I would rather marry a pauper than Uncle Simon. And Daddy isn’t a drawing master anyway. He’s a painter. It’s not his fault his paintings aren’t the sort that sell.
I suppose I should be grateful to Aunt Eliza for paying my school fees and letting me come and stay with her for the Season (though my cousins Mariah and Isabelle rather sneer at me for having gone to school —
they had governesses, of course). And it is fun — all the balls and tea parties and so forth. The other girls are rather jolly, even if they are fearful snobs. Isabelle and Mariah certainly are. I think it’s being brought up by Aunt Eliza that does it. They all treat me rather as a hired monkey —“Sophia, fetch me my slippers, would you?” “Sophia, tell Langton to get the coach ready for seven.” I think your grandmother and my aunt would get along, Tirzah!
Mariah and Isabelle are just jealous because the men like me more than them. I danced every dance at Lady Frances’s ball on Saturday, and weren’t they green? They cannot understand it — a plain little thing like me. But men like a girl who makes them laugh.
No, I have
not fallen in love yet — though I certainly intend to be married before the end of the Season. I won’t get more than one Season, so I shall make the most of it.
Tell me, Polly — how are you coping in that orphanage of yours? Do you still like being a schoolmarm?
Your dear friend, The not-yet-titled Sophia 45 Park Lane
Liverpool
27th November 1896
Dear Sophia and Tirzah, It feels very strange to be writing to you both at once like this — it’s so queer to be copying all my questions to Sophia onto your letter, Tirzah. But I do rather like it. I miss you both enormously, although I like being at home too. I love my home. It isn’t as grand as Sophia’s aunt’s house in Mayfair. The carpet is flapping off the top of the stairs, and there are greasy fingerprints all along the walls, and it’s drafty and shabby, and the windowpanes rattle in a high wind. But I love being here with Mother and Father and Betsy and the little ones. Even Michael sometimes, when he comes home for the weekend. It’s very funny to think of my big brother as a university student. “We’re growing up, little sister,” he says to me, although I don’t feel grown-up in the slightest. Do you? I hardly recognize myself in the looking glass, with my hair up and my skirts down. I still feel like a little girl inside.
Working life is good. The orphanage is a wonderful institution. We take little children who would otherwise be sent to the workhouse or end up starving on the streets. It really is so sad — there are far more children than we can ever help. We get so many women in trouble coming to the doors, begging for our help. And most of them we have to send away. Sometimes it is women who are not married and have no way of supporting an infant. And sometimes they simply cannot feed or house another child. Miss Jessop says very often the babies we cannot take are abandoned in the street or given to baby farmers to raise, and many of them die.
The youngest children go out to foster families in the local area. They come back to us at five, which is when they start in my school. I am teaching the smallest children, and the little ones are so sweet. They are always wanting to climb onto my lap and put their arms around me. I wish I could take them all home! They leave us at fourteen, the girls mostly to domestic service, the boys to the navy.
Your industrious friend, Polly
PS Do you think your grandmother would let you come and visit us, Tirzah? Could you come for Christmas again? You know we would love to have you. Mother still talks about that Christmas when you dressed up as Judith for the charades and chopped off Michael’s head into the basket.
45 Park Lane
Liverpool
27th November 1896
Dear Sophia, I know Tirzah said to write one letter to you both at once, and I have (I sent it to Tirzah, who I suppose will pass it on to you), but I felt I must add a few short lines just to you, Sophia. Do you think her grandmother really is as awful as she says, or is it just Tirzah being Tirzah? I showed Mother her letter, and she said that some women do very well as housekeepers for their relations, but Tirzah is a girl who needs a bit of life of her own. I think she’s right. I can’t imagine what her parents are thinking letting her stay with that woman. Couldn’t she go out to India with them?
I hope your aunt and cousins aren’t too hideous, and the men are perfectly charming.
Polly
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