Fanny and Mrs. Butters’ lady’s maid were both in their usual places, travelling backwards as the carriage jolted and bumped along the muddy lane for the four-mile journey from Stoke Newington to Camden Town. Another phase of her life was ending, and she could not see, could not fully imagine, what awaited. For, after months of discussion, preparation and delay, the long-awaited sewing academy, the project so dear to Mrs. Butters’ heart, would finally open.
“Oh! Fanny! Did we remember to bring the application papers?”
“Indeed, ma’am, they are here in my portmanteau. And quills and ink bottles.”
“And the instructions for the parents? Not that half of them will be able to read it.”
“Yes ma’am. We collected everything from the printer yesterday.”
Mrs. Butters leaned back and sighed. “Of course you did, my dear. How silly of me. It must come of spending so much time with Laetitia— she is so inclined to mistrust everyone’s competence but her own.”
Fanny smiled in response, but out of politeness, she refrained from heartily agreeing with the assessment of Laetitia Blodgett, Mrs. Butters’ sister-in-law. Laetitia Blodgett was of an age with Mrs. Butters, and both were outspoken, active, managing sorts of women, but there, Fanny reflected, the similarity ended.
Before her marriage forty years ago, Mrs. Butters had been Miss Harriet Blodgett, of the prosperous and well-known family of linen-drapers in Bristol, a busy sea-port that had profited from the African slave trade. The Blodgetts foresaw that the government’s edict outlawing the slave trade would mean the wives of ship captains and the wives of merchants would have to curtail their spending on silk, satin, muslin, and lace. And they were correct: the factories and the dockyards of the city were quiet, and the shopkeepers of Bristol waited in vain for customers.
The Blodgetts resolved to expand their business into London while at the same time establishing a school for instructing impoverished girls of good character in the needle trade. This was to be both a charitable and a commercial enterprise, the profits from the latter providing the funds for the former. The school was under the supervision of a committee of lady patrons, all members of that reputable organization, the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor.
Mrs. Butters attended many lengthy meetings of the ladies’ committee, and Fanny acted as their secretary, taking excellent notes in her neat handwriting, while the charitable ladies debated and discussed every detail of the enterprise. They examined and rejected possible locations, eventually selecting a spacious brick warehouse in Camden Town, but it was found to need many more alterations and fittings-up than first anticipated, and all in all, it was such a complex and drawn-out business, requiring so much in the way of talkings-over, second and third thoughts, and polite disagreement and irritated feelings, that Fanny could only wonder how other, truly ambitious operations were ever successfully conducted. How did ordinary mortals put aside their petty vanities and uneven tempers to construct canals, or build cathedrals or invade countries?
Even the most appropriate name for the enterprise had been debated at length. One lady had proposed “The Academy for the Needle Arts,” others protested that “Academy” was too... well, verging on being pretentious, and another suggested the “Camden Town Needlework School and Emporium operated by the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor.”
A polite silence followed, and eventually Laetitia Blodgett observed that, of the half-a-dozen names put forward, none of them included the name of “Blodgett,” that is, the name of the family sponsoring the scheme, and perhaps it was not too presumptuous to expect, etc., so in the end it was agreed, or rather, some ladies resigned themselves to the fact, that the school would be called “Blodgett’s Charitable Academy.”
Thereafter everyone called it, simply “the Academy,” including the Blodgetts.
Fanny wholeheartedly supported the benevolence of the scheme; her strong sense of gratitude to Mrs. Butters alone assured her participation. Thanks in large measure to Mrs. Butters, Fanny believed she acquired confidence and wisdom. She could recall the past, and her difficult childhood, with forbearance. Her stern uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, used to frighten her, and her cousins Tom, Maria, and Julia alternately bullied or neglected her as they grew up together. Her aunt, Lady Bertram, was too indolent to take an interest in raising her children. Fanny remembered them all, and Mansfield Park, with fondness. She could even feel pity for her Aunt Norris when she imagined that lady living all alone in Mansfield village, no longer able to direct and advise, to scold and warn, to bustle about the great house engaged in the important little nothings which had given purpose to her existence.
As for the fourth cousin, Edmund....
Her wish to avoid thinking about Edmund helped, just a little, in quelling the doubts that assailed her, for she realised that plunging her mind, heart and hands into this new enterprise was the best way to put the past behind her.
“So, here we are at last, ladies,” exclaimed Mrs. Butters as the coachman drew up to the three-storied brick warehouse which was to be Fanny’s new place of employment. A scaffolding was erected across the front of the building, and a man was perched up high, painting “Blodgett’s Charitable Academy” and “Blodgett & Son, Linen-Drapers” in large gold letters above the door. “What a busy day is in front of us! And we breakfasted so early—I am already feeling famished. I hope Matron has got some tea ready.”
“I shall examine the shop, Madame, if you please,” announced her lady’s maid Madame Orly.
