A GAME OF ANAGRAMS
1851
London fog. It had only been a year since Mr. Dickens had written in David Copperfield, “A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets!” Two years hence he would continue his disquisition in Bleak House, writing, “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river … fog down the river … Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners …”
This day, however, no fog blanketed the stately, four-story house on Spencer Street in Bloomsbury, and pale sunlight filtered through the delicate linen curtains into the drawing room where a mother and daughter passed the afternoon in quiet company.
The mother sat reading; the daughter sat thinking, her attention focused on permutations of letters, as well as on her (completely unjustified) displeasure with the limits of her vocabulary.
“What letter did you draw, Amelia?”
Amelia looked at the wooden tile in her hand and frowned. “It is an M.”
“You look displeased, sweetheart.”
Amelia placed the square on the table next to several other letter tiles and studied the array carefully. “Do I, mother? I apologize for being unseemly. I do so wish my face would bespeak my true emotion, which is puzzlement, instead of what it obviously presents to you.”
Amelia’s mother leaned over and looked at the tiles laid out on the table before her daughter. “Why are you unhappy, dear? You have indeed formed words. And that is the object of the game of Anagrams, is it not?”
Amelia sighed and said, “It is, mother, but the theme of this game is ‘Places About London’ and the two words I have formed – ‘traverse him,’ do not seem to be any locale I personally can recall in our grand city.”
Amelia’s mother laughed. “That is because you are forgetful of the game you are playing, dear. What is an anagram, after all?”
Amelia’s face lit up with sudden understanding. “Of course. It’s a jumble!”
Her mother patted her hand and said, “That is correct, sweetheart. So now you may apply your usual diligent purpose to uncovering the secret.”
Amelia looked again at the tiles laid out and, within seconds, her eyes widened. Her mother smiled, knowing that it wouldn’t take long for her to deduce the correct answer.
“‘Traverse him … traverse him …’”
Mrs. Vickery remained silent. She so enjoyed spending time with her daughter on the days her governess did not tutor her. Emmeline Vickery believed that there was more to education than Greek, Latin, mathematics, music, and geography. She herself had been schooled by a governess – Beatrice - who had also taken the time to enlighten her on matters other than those that could be found in books.
“Of course. The Thames. The Thames River!”
It was at that moment that Colleen, one of the Vickerys’ housemaids, appeared at the door of the drawing room and cleared her throat. When Mrs. Vickery said, “What is it, Colleen?” the maid did a quick curtsy and said, “Ma’am, if you please. The rag-and-bone man is here.”
Colleen kept her head lowered, so to hide as best she could the gaping scars left behind following her time with the pox. The Vickerys, of course, had all been inoculated against smallpox, but many of the working poor had not. Colleen had caught the pox from her brother, Stephen, who had died from it.
Colleen preferred the shadows and shunned mirrors. It was known amongst the other housemaids that Colleen had looked at her visage but one time after she recovered, and had never again even glanced at her reflection. One of the kitchen maids, Patricia – one of the more gossipy servants - had once confided in the Mistress that Colleen had made a vow to God that she would never again look in a mirror. “Aye,” Patricia had said in a whisper. “She’s offerin’ the ‘band’ament of her vanity up to the Lord, ma’am … though I ain’t sure he really wants it.”
Mrs. Vickery did not turn to face Colleen as she spoke. She picked up her tea and took a small sip. The pocky maid waited silently at the door as Amelia rearranged her tiles to spell out ‘Thames River.’”
“Do we have anything for him?”
“Aye, ma’am.” Another curtsy. “A small bucket ‘a bones and two tin of ashes.”
Mrs. Vickery took another sip. “Very well. You may sell him what he will take.”
Colleen curtsied a third time and quickly left the doorway. Amelia looked up from her tiles. “What does Andy do with our bones and ashes, mother?”
Mrs. Vickery looked surprised. “Don’t you know, dear?”
Amelia shook her head. “No … not really. I have known of Andy the rag-and-bone man since as far back as I can remember. He comes every Tuesday around midday, and Colleen, or one of the other housemaids, comes to you and asks you if they can sell him our bones and ashes. But I have never known the purpose to which he applies our … what can we call them, mother? … our leavings?”
Mrs. Vickery laughed softly, more of a giggle, actually, her lilting tones sounding as music to Amelia’s ears. Amelia loved when her mother laughed, or even when she smiled. That didn’t happen very often, however, and Amelia often wondered if it was because her father was out of the house so often.
Amelia’s father was a very respected physician, and he had an office on Fleet Street in central London, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and a short walk from Hyde Park and the Crystal Palace. Father was usually gone from their house in Bloomsbury by seven in the morning, and he often did not return until the same time, or later, in the evening. The Vickery household revolved its doings around the comings and goings of the master. Tea and his beloved scones with clotted cream and jam were ready for the doctor’s first breakfast by six-thirty; dinner was promptly at seven-thirty, unless Mrs. Vickery received a note during the day delivered by a messenger informing her the doctor would be late.
Oftentimes, when this happened, Dr. Vickery would advocate in his missive that Mrs. Vickery and Amelia partake of their evening repast minus his presence, but, again, as far back as Amelia could recall, that had never once happened in the Vickery household. Her mother would issue immediate instructions to the kitchen staff that the soup be kept gently simmering; the fowl or cutlets, warm and continually basted; and the beets and salad chilled in cold water until the master returned home. Only then would the family sit down to their evening dinner.
“The ashes he sells to masons who use them to make bricks. The bones he sells to a miller, who grinds them into fertilizer. I understand he on occasion will also sell a quantity of ashes to farmers to use in their …” Mrs. Vickery hesitated and Amelia said, “Mother? To use in their what?”
Mrs. Vickery blushed, and was relieved that it was only her daughter who witnessed such an unseemly display of raw emotion. “I repel at using the word … and perhaps conjuring in your mind a notion of it …”
Amelia reached across the table and grasped her mother’s hand. “What is it, mother?”
Mrs. Vickery squeezed her daughter’s hand, leaned in close, and said, “He sells it to farmers to use in manure.” Upon the utterance of the word “manure,” Mrs. Vickery’s eyebrows rose and her mouth drew down as though the simple pronunciation of the word had left a bad taste in her mouth.
Amelia leaned back with a puzzled look on her face. “What is so terrible about manure for crops, mother? I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry, my dear, but I can discuss it no further. The mere contemplation of such an indelicate subject has, in the past, afflicted me with a terrible spell of the vapors. Or whatever my affliction may, in fact, be.”
Amelia dropped the subject. She had borne horrified witness to many of her mother’s “spells,” and could easily summon to mind the image of her mother clutching her chest, swooning into a chair, and then pressing her hands to the side of her head and moaning with a depth of woe that moved Amelia to tears at each episode. When such an event occurred, Amelia would run to the sideboard and open the upper doors – never the lower, where the chamber pots were stored – and grab the bottle of golden laudanum. She would quickly return to her mother, use the dropper to squeeze a small quantity of the revivifying elixir into her mother’s tea, and then raise the cup to her mother’s lips and help her to drink.
Amelia did not understand why her mother experienced these attacks. She had once overheard the maids whispering about a horrifying moment from the Missus’s life, but Amelia did not know of what they spoke. She would feel terrible if she knew it was the traumatic experience of giving birth to Amelia that had changed her mother for the worse. She did not yet know that labor and delivery were unpleasant and excruciating and involved an abundance of bodily fluids and physical acts never discussed. She did not yet know that her mother’s constitution had been incapable of carrying out Amelia’s birth without it doing untold damage to her mother’s mind and soul.
“I apologize, mother. I did not mean to be impertinent.”
Mrs. Vickery laughed and leaned forward to gently embrace her daughter. “Nonsense, my dear. You must always feel as though you can come to me with anything that is on your mind. Do you understand?”
Amelia nodded and returned the hug. She knew her mother was sincere in her expression of openness, but Amelia knew her mother well. She knew that, for all her mother’s heartfelt desire to be a counsel and comfort to her daughter, she was quite fragile in mind and spirit. Amelia would often watch her mother as she moved through the house, tending to this or that, fussing with this or that. Sometimes, Amelia noticed, her face would darken, but not out of anger or frustration; rather, Amelia could not help but sense fear emanating from her mother; waves of it glissading off her and surrounding her like an ethereal, sinuous cloak.
It was at times like this that Amelia felt something akin to panic; a feeling of rootlessness accompanied by an all-consuming fear that everything she knew could be taken away from her; could vanish. Amelia was a clever young girl, however, and she could usually summon the rational stratum of her psyche and put it to work banishing these dark thoughts. Sometimes she would deliberately insert herself into her mother’s affairs in an attempt to brighten her mood. “Mother, could you possibly find the time to help me with my embroidery?” she would innocently ask, and then take great delight in the easing of her mother’s countenance, and in the obvious banishment of her fear.
Amelia glanced at the oak mantle clock and saw that it was time for her studies. She began putting away the Anagram tiles, but her mother stopped her by gently placing her hand on her wrist and said, “Shall we try one more round, dear?”
Amelia smiled and nodded. “Of course, mother. My Latin primer can surely await my attention for one more round of Anagrams.”
Mrs. Vickery laughed and pulled the first tile from the box. “I’m sure it can, dear. But let us not tell Father of our decadent indulgence in play in the middle of the day, all right?”
Amelia winked and said, “Of course, mother,” and pulled a tile. “An X. Oh, dear. What will I do with an X?”
As mother and daughter pulled tiles from the mahogany box and arranged them on the filigreed linen tablecloth, out back, Andy lugged the Vickerys’ bones and ashes to his cart, which was parked discretely out of sight in the side alley, his roan horse awaiting his master for their return jaunt to Andy’s home borough of Bexley.
1851
London fog. It had only been a year since Mr. Dickens had written in David Copperfield, “A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets!” Two years hence he would continue his disquisition in Bleak House, writing, “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river … fog down the river … Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners …”
This day, however, no fog blanketed the stately, four-story house on Spencer Street in Bloomsbury, and pale sunlight filtered through the delicate linen curtains into the drawing room where a mother and daughter passed the afternoon in quiet company.
The mother sat reading; the daughter sat thinking, her attention focused on permutations of letters, as well as on her (completely unjustified) displeasure with the limits of her vocabulary.
“What letter did you draw, Amelia?”
Amelia looked at the wooden tile in her hand and frowned. “It is an M.”
“You look displeased, sweetheart.”
Amelia placed the square on the table next to several other letter tiles and studied the array carefully. “Do I, mother? I apologize for being unseemly. I do so wish my face would bespeak my true emotion, which is puzzlement, instead of what it obviously presents to you.”
Amelia’s mother leaned over and looked at the tiles laid out on the table before her daughter. “Why are you unhappy, dear? You have indeed formed words. And that is the object of the game of Anagrams, is it not?”
Amelia sighed and said, “It is, mother, but the theme of this game is ‘Places About London’ and the two words I have formed – ‘traverse him,’ do not seem to be any locale I personally can recall in our grand city.”
Amelia’s mother laughed. “That is because you are forgetful of the game you are playing, dear. What is an anagram, after all?”
Amelia’s face lit up with sudden understanding. “Of course. It’s a jumble!”
Her mother patted her hand and said, “That is correct, sweetheart. So now you may apply your usual diligent purpose to uncovering the secret.”
Amelia looked again at the tiles laid out and, within seconds, her eyes widened. Her mother smiled, knowing that it wouldn’t take long for her to deduce the correct answer.
“‘Traverse him … traverse him …’”
Mrs. Vickery remained silent. She so enjoyed spending time with her daughter on the days her governess did not tutor her. Emmeline Vickery believed that there was more to education than Greek, Latin, mathematics, music, and geography. She herself had been schooled by a governess – Beatrice - who had also taken the time to enlighten her on matters other than those that could be found in books.
“Of course. The Thames. The Thames River!”
It was at that moment that Colleen, one of the Vickerys’ housemaids, appeared at the door of the drawing room and cleared her throat. When Mrs. Vickery said, “What is it, Colleen?” the maid did a quick curtsy and said, “Ma’am, if you please. The rag-and-bone man is here.”
Colleen kept her head lowered, so to hide as best she could the gaping scars left behind following her time with the pox. The Vickerys, of course, had all been inoculated against smallpox, but many of the working poor had not. Colleen had caught the pox from her brother, Stephen, who had died from it.
Colleen preferred the shadows and shunned mirrors. It was known amongst the other housemaids that Colleen had looked at her visage but one time after she recovered, and had never again even glanced at her reflection. One of the kitchen maids, Patricia – one of the more gossipy servants - had once confided in the Mistress that Colleen had made a vow to God that she would never again look in a mirror. “Aye,” Patricia had said in a whisper. “She’s offerin’ the ‘band’ament of her vanity up to the Lord, ma’am … though I ain’t sure he really wants it.”
Mrs. Vickery did not turn to face Colleen as she spoke. She picked up her tea and took a small sip. The pocky maid waited silently at the door as Amelia rearranged her tiles to spell out ‘Thames River.’”
“Do we have anything for him?”
“Aye, ma’am.” Another curtsy. “A small bucket ‘a bones and two tin of ashes.”
Mrs. Vickery took another sip. “Very well. You may sell him what he will take.”
Colleen curtsied a third time and quickly left the doorway. Amelia looked up from her tiles. “What does Andy do with our bones and ashes, mother?”
Mrs. Vickery looked surprised. “Don’t you know, dear?”
Amelia shook her head. “No … not really. I have known of Andy the rag-and-bone man since as far back as I can remember. He comes every Tuesday around midday, and Colleen, or one of the other housemaids, comes to you and asks you if they can sell him our bones and ashes. But I have never known the purpose to which he applies our … what can we call them, mother? … our leavings?”
Mrs. Vickery laughed softly, more of a giggle, actually, her lilting tones sounding as music to Amelia’s ears. Amelia loved when her mother laughed, or even when she smiled. That didn’t happen very often, however, and Amelia often wondered if it was because her father was out of the house so often.
Amelia’s father was a very respected physician, and he had an office on Fleet Street in central London, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and a short walk from Hyde Park and the Crystal Palace. Father was usually gone from their house in Bloomsbury by seven in the morning, and he often did not return until the same time, or later, in the evening. The Vickery household revolved its doings around the comings and goings of the master. Tea and his beloved scones with clotted cream and jam were ready for the doctor’s first breakfast by six-thirty; dinner was promptly at seven-thirty, unless Mrs. Vickery received a note during the day delivered by a messenger informing her the doctor would be late.
Oftentimes, when this happened, Dr. Vickery would advocate in his missive that Mrs. Vickery and Amelia partake of their evening repast minus his presence, but, again, as far back as Amelia could recall, that had never once happened in the Vickery household. Her mother would issue immediate instructions to the kitchen staff that the soup be kept gently simmering; the fowl or cutlets, warm and continually basted; and the beets and salad chilled in cold water until the master returned home. Only then would the family sit down to their evening dinner.
“The ashes he sells to masons who use them to make bricks. The bones he sells to a miller, who grinds them into fertilizer. I understand he on occasion will also sell a quantity of ashes to farmers to use in their …” Mrs. Vickery hesitated and Amelia said, “Mother? To use in their what?”
Mrs. Vickery blushed, and was relieved that it was only her daughter who witnessed such an unseemly display of raw emotion. “I repel at using the word … and perhaps conjuring in your mind a notion of it …”
Amelia reached across the table and grasped her mother’s hand. “What is it, mother?”
Mrs. Vickery squeezed her daughter’s hand, leaned in close, and said, “He sells it to farmers to use in manure.” Upon the utterance of the word “manure,” Mrs. Vickery’s eyebrows rose and her mouth drew down as though the simple pronunciation of the word had left a bad taste in her mouth.
Amelia leaned back with a puzzled look on her face. “What is so terrible about manure for crops, mother? I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry, my dear, but I can discuss it no further. The mere contemplation of such an indelicate subject has, in the past, afflicted me with a terrible spell of the vapors. Or whatever my affliction may, in fact, be.”
Amelia dropped the subject. She had borne horrified witness to many of her mother’s “spells,” and could easily summon to mind the image of her mother clutching her chest, swooning into a chair, and then pressing her hands to the side of her head and moaning with a depth of woe that moved Amelia to tears at each episode. When such an event occurred, Amelia would run to the sideboard and open the upper doors – never the lower, where the chamber pots were stored – and grab the bottle of golden laudanum. She would quickly return to her mother, use the dropper to squeeze a small quantity of the revivifying elixir into her mother’s tea, and then raise the cup to her mother’s lips and help her to drink.
Amelia did not understand why her mother experienced these attacks. She had once overheard the maids whispering about a horrifying moment from the Missus’s life, but Amelia did not know of what they spoke. She would feel terrible if she knew it was the traumatic experience of giving birth to Amelia that had changed her mother for the worse. She did not yet know that labor and delivery were unpleasant and excruciating and involved an abundance of bodily fluids and physical acts never discussed. She did not yet know that her mother’s constitution had been incapable of carrying out Amelia’s birth without it doing untold damage to her mother’s mind and soul.
“I apologize, mother. I did not mean to be impertinent.”
Mrs. Vickery laughed and leaned forward to gently embrace her daughter. “Nonsense, my dear. You must always feel as though you can come to me with anything that is on your mind. Do you understand?”
Amelia nodded and returned the hug. She knew her mother was sincere in her expression of openness, but Amelia knew her mother well. She knew that, for all her mother’s heartfelt desire to be a counsel and comfort to her daughter, she was quite fragile in mind and spirit. Amelia would often watch her mother as she moved through the house, tending to this or that, fussing with this or that. Sometimes, Amelia noticed, her face would darken, but not out of anger or frustration; rather, Amelia could not help but sense fear emanating from her mother; waves of it glissading off her and surrounding her like an ethereal, sinuous cloak.
It was at times like this that Amelia felt something akin to panic; a feeling of rootlessness accompanied by an all-consuming fear that everything she knew could be taken away from her; could vanish. Amelia was a clever young girl, however, and she could usually summon the rational stratum of her psyche and put it to work banishing these dark thoughts. Sometimes she would deliberately insert herself into her mother’s affairs in an attempt to brighten her mood. “Mother, could you possibly find the time to help me with my embroidery?” she would innocently ask, and then take great delight in the easing of her mother’s countenance, and in the obvious banishment of her fear.
Amelia glanced at the oak mantle clock and saw that it was time for her studies. She began putting away the Anagram tiles, but her mother stopped her by gently placing her hand on her wrist and said, “Shall we try one more round, dear?”
Amelia smiled and nodded. “Of course, mother. My Latin primer can surely await my attention for one more round of Anagrams.”
Mrs. Vickery laughed and pulled the first tile from the box. “I’m sure it can, dear. But let us not tell Father of our decadent indulgence in play in the middle of the day, all right?”
Amelia winked and said, “Of course, mother,” and pulled a tile. “An X. Oh, dear. What will I do with an X?”
As mother and daughter pulled tiles from the mahogany box and arranged them on the filigreed linen tablecloth, out back, Andy lugged the Vickerys’ bones and ashes to his cart, which was parked discretely out of sight in the side alley, his roan horse awaiting his master for their return jaunt to Andy’s home borough of Bexley.