My Notorious Life (40 page)

In the afternoon I fetched Annabelle from her school, and we brought poor Cordelia strawberries and a chocolate wrapped in colored paper. I plumped her pillows while Belle warbled in the corner, playing with the ribbons on her hat. —There now, Cordelia, love, I said. —You’re all right now.

—Do you know how to make a man marry you? she asked.

—If you have to make him, then you don’t want him.

—Mr. Purdy’s all I have. There’s no one else.

—You could work here for me. We are in need of a kitchen maid.

—Oh yes please, miss, said Belle, who was ever after listening in. —You are much more nicer than our Maggie who licks the frosting spoon ahead of me.

—A kitchen maid? Cordelia considered it. I watched her. You could see her dress herself in a uniform, the apron, wondering where does a kitchen maid sleep?
I could teach her,
I thought. Her hands were small. She would learn like me.

—I was a maid once myself, I told her, —in a doctor’s house. Not near as nice as this.

—Oh, she said, —were you? Her smile was watery and distracted.

When she declined and said she was going back to her so-called guardian, I gave her an envelope of French letters. —He won’t, says she. —He doesn’t care for them.

—The b*****d, I says. —So here’s another remedy to try then when he’s after you: coat a piece of sponge with honey and put that where the sun don’t shine. If you’re lucky he’ll never know the difference and it’ll act as a pessary against a repeat visit, and if you’re not lucky—well I’m hopeful, sweetheart, I’m hopeful for you.

Later, she came downstairs with her satchel packed and her hair swept into a knot. She embraced me tearfully. —Oh Madame. Thank you.

—Never mind, I said, fondly. —You’re all right now.

—You’re good as a mother to me. She kissed me. —I’ll never forget you. Cordelia then squared her shoulders and departed my doorstep, checking left and right to see if she was watched. No one was about, or so it appeared.

A
t half past nine one morning not long after Cordelia left, I was returning home from a lady in labor on Duane Street, a heroine’s effort all night, with a boy just delivered. When I turned the corner home to Liberty Street, there was my girl Belle, a wee trundle of black curls and motion. She was playing with a hoop, and as it rolled along, she chased after it. —Smelly Nelly! she sang, full of spunk and vinegar.

The white of her knee shone in a knob through the hole in her stockings and her ribbon was untied. —Smelly Nelly, she cried loudly.

Ellen, the governess who she called Nelly, sat on the steps of our house, watching with a well-paid eye. Annabelle did not like her.

—Smelly, smelly, smelly Nelly, my girl sang out.

Having now studied the Mother’s Book by Mrs. Lydia Child, I known it was not proper for a young lady to shriek like a savage so I stopped her by surprise.

—Oh Mam! she cried when she saw me, and leaped into my arms. She clamped her legs around my waist, kissed my face and petted my hair. —I have a new hoop!

—Do you now, ya bad girl?

—I am not bad.

—Calling Ellen names! Shrieking like a banshee. Look at your stockings!

—I don’t care. The cook’s man gave me this hoop off a tar barrel.

She struggled out of my arms and rolled it away fast with her mighty five-year-old legs chugging. I watched her with a strange heart, afraid. Terrified always. A horse would shy and run her over. A buggy would. Fever would come in the night. Strangers would take her from me.

Instead, danger announced itself in the cry of a newsboy.

—The Charnel House of Liberty Street! he cried, just when my daughter passed him with her barrel hoop. —Get your paper here! The Charnel House of Liberty Street!

—My Mam has offices on Liberty Street, says Belle, and stopped next to him.

—Why then, ask her to buy you a copy of the
Polyanthos,
said the runt of a newsboy, pimples on his face like smashed raspberries. —Get your
Polyanthos
here! A nickel is all! The Charnel House of Shame. Liberty Street Scandal!

Full of foreboding I paid him a nickel and took Belle by the hand.

—We live on Liberty Street, isn’t that so, Mam? she said, trotting along beside me, looking up, ready for a talk. How we loved to talk, us two. That child was an Axie like her mam. Nothing was ever so much fun for me as to tell her things and see what question she’d manufacture next. Now, though, I did not answer her chatter, when she asked What is a Charnel House? but stopped still at the headlines.

In the newspaper I held open there above my daughter’s head, was half a page printed with a lithograph in a scowling likeness of ME, dark hair in ringlets. “Madame DeBeausacq, The Female Abortionist,” it said below the portrait, with a skull below and bones crossed beneath my shawl. Right alongside this slander was printed a scurrilous pile of dung written by one George W. Dixon, editor.

In our fair city lurks a Demon woman called Madame DeBeausacq who has been responsible for hundreds of wicked crimes! It is too well known just what her evil practices entail. This Bat, this bloodsucker, is a blot stain on humanity, her crimes are crimes against morality!

More c**p. The Applegate affair had faded away and there was nothing new for the jackals to feed on, so they was conjuring B. and S. against ME, while nobody, not ONE of those gargoyles, wrote how George Washington Dixon, the editor of the
Polyanthos,
was a man known to manufacture spectacle in order to sell his rag. He was known for dressing in blackface to sing the darkie song Zip Coon. Known for circus tricks and hypnotism, known to love a scandal, as tawdry as possible. If an actual scandal was not available, he drummed one up. Charlie had explained it all to me. How the papers worked. How the editor of the
Police Gazette
was none other than George Matsell, the Police Chief himself. The newspapers was good for nothing but fishwrap. They were not satisfied planting rumors and falsehoods about me. They wanted a riot. They wanted my head on a plate.

—What does it say, Mam? asked Belle, tugging my hand. —What does it say?

—Nothing true.

What it said was manure off the street. The cove Dixon was lucky, because if I was a bat or a demon I’d come for him in the night and carry him off to fester in a pig wallow where he’d be right at home, obsessed as he was with so-called female VIRTUE. As I read along, fury replaced fear, as I saw what this Dixon was up to. He’d have you believe it was WOMEN who corrupted themselves, all alone, and the MEN—so-called GUARDIANS like George Purdy—had nothing to do with it. In Dixon’s excuse for intelligent argument, he wrote that if it wasn’t for ME, Madame DeB., the Ladies of Gotham would all be Virgins. But, because I sold certain medicines and services, they was hoors and I had made them hoors.

Men! You took to your bosom a wife, the image of purity, a thing upon which you think the stamp of God has been printed. Not so! Madame DeB*******’s so-called Preventative Powders have counterfeited the handwriting of Nature. You have not a medal, fresh from the mint, but a base, lacquered counter that has undergone the sweaty contamination of a hundred palms. Madame DeB******* will tell you how to swindle your husband or deceive your lover.

If you asked me, I and my Remedy saved more females from becoming red light sisters than any preacher on Sunday, and these b*****ds should get down on their knobby knees and thank me. Instead they blanked out my name like it was a curse and drew pictures of me as a hellkite witch. Then this POODLE Dixon of the
Polyanthos,
again called out the law on me.

Where is the grand jury? Where the police? We, the
Polyanthos,
will keep this woman’s flag, with the death’s head and marrow bones, at her mast head, until she is legally dealt with!

—Mother! said Belle. She tugged at my elbow. —What does it say?

—Lies and c**p my darling, I said, but with a new cold paw of fear on my neck. —It’s all c**p.

—C**p, she said so prettily, and I had to kneel and explain to her ladies did not say such words, and that Mrs. Priscilla Lyle the headmistress of Lyle School for Girls would not like her to say them in her schoolyard. My angel nodded very solemn. —Why then do you say them, Mam?

—Do not ask so many questions.

—Yes Mother, says she, and we skipped up the front steps where I left her to Smelly Nelly the governess and went to the library to find my husband to show him these new words: Grand Jury.

—Death’s Head and Marrow Bones my a**, Charlie said, reading Dixon’s screed.

—But Charlie, more and more they talk of POLICE! I cried. —Mrs. Evans never once was exposed to the law, but now thanks to that Applegate, the papers’ll have the traps on me.

—Not on you, Mrs. Jones. On Madame DeBeausacq. The point is YOU are not Madame. Madame is an old woman, an aged French lady who visits from time to time, when she’s here from Paris. Sometimes she’s in town, and sometimes she’s not. They can’t hang you for the acts of another.

—They have a picture!

—A drawing that looks nothing like you. Who’s to say you are Madame?

—The police. They have their manacles and what have I got? Twaddle.

—You’ve got secrets. You know the name of every Society Gentleman whose mistakes you fixed. You know their doxies. You have a list. You have
names. You have dates. They have no proof. They can’t touch you. If they do, you’ll reveal them.

—Oh, I said, slumping. I took a breath and remembered. He was right. Wasn’t he? They couldn’t touch me. I had a list. I wasn’t Madame, I was Mrs. Jones. Again his confidence lowered my guard and draped a blanket of safety around my shoulders.

—Have you ever heard of a midwife getting arrested? he asked. —Have you? No. Morrill hasn’t either, and he’s a lawyer. You are safe.

Charlie’s arguments renewed my resolve and worse, gave me contempt for my Enemies. The stupid b******s. I read Dixon’s words, scoffing along with Charlie.

—How can Dixon say it is ME who corrupts? I said, in full cry, —when it’s men, these wolves who do the sweet-talking and the strong-arming and can’t control their urges. The only one looking out for the ladies is ME.

Charlie grinned. —Well argued, Mrs. Jones. It’s almost like you’d been hanging around with a rabble of dangerous freethinkers or some such. He again bore down on his pen, and soon handed me a page. —Here’s your letter to the editor, Madame.

To: George W. Dixon, Editor, The Polyanthos

From: Madame J. A. DeBeausacq

Sirs,

I cannot conceive how men who are husbands, brothers, or fathers can give utterance to an idea so base and infamous—that their wives, their sisters, or their daughters want but the “facilities” to be scandalous. What! is female virtue then a mere thing of circumstance and occasion? Is there but a difference of opportunity between it and pr*st*t*tion? Would your wives and your sisters, and your daughters, if once absolved from fear, all become pr*st*t**es? I assure you, not, and I have their names and their letters as proof! In fact, the Preventative Powders sold by Madame DeBeausacq are well known to PROTECT the lives of mothers and women, and save them from VICE. Gentlemen! I urge you to eschew your OWN immoral conduct, lest you bring
shame upon that state of virtue which you value and prize beyond any other feminine attribute.

Signed, Madame J. A. DeBeausacq, 129 Liberty Street.

—You do have a talent for how to write me down, Charles Jones, I said, and saw again by his pleased expression how he liked to hear sweet words from me.

Included with the letter to the editors, Charlie had wrote out a list, simply called “patients,” which consisted of names, disguised, as follows: Mrs. John A., magistrate’s wife; John P., financier; John L., banker; Miss Jane W., Daughter of the American Revolution; Mrs. John N. T., wife of the distinguished professor, and so on.

—The list, he said, —is the secret weapon. If they arrest you, you’ll threaten to release the names. Plenty of coves in this city—bigwigs and fat cats—want that list to remain secret. They’ll make sure any charges are dropped.

The
Polyanthos
printed the letter the next day, but neither the letter nor the threat of the LIST did any good, for published alongside my note was MORE of Dixon’s lies. That weevil was too cowardly even to print my name. Instead the next day, it was Dixon who branded on me the rude moniker MADAME X.

The Female Abortionist, by George Washington Dixon

No doubt, that with our efforts redoubled, this atrocious foreign woman, notorious throughout this city, will soon be brought to justice. Her nefarious practices will cease, so that the ladies of New York will guard their virtue with more care. But beware! When Madame X (whose francophone name is too well known in our city to need reprinting, its very sound a curse) is in the dock, awful disclosures will pour forth: the names of the prominent and the wellborn, and the true nature of the Gomorrah where we live will be revealed. Sinners should tremble in their boots.