The Journal of Dora Damage Read online

  Praise for The Journal of Dora Damage

  ‘The Journal of Dora Damage is the vivid, stylish, witty story of a woman who refuses to accept her powerlessness . . . Starling illuminates the period, diving beneath the surface of things with vertiginous introspection and consummate poise’

  Susanna Moore, author of The Big Girls and In the Cut

  ‘The language of bookbinding lends itself to the novelist’s palette . . . So it’s a joy to find Starling doing it justice in The Journal of Dora Damage . . . the thriving genre of Vic-lit finds itself attracting new talent. Starling doesn’t fail to take the baton and run. Characterisation is sharp, and the prose is ripe and believable . . . she left behind a novel as dizzyingly detailed as one of Dora’s bindings, for it is certainly no mean achievement’

  Spectator

  ‘A writer of real accompaniment . . . A well-stitched tapestry of plot, symbol and character’

  Independent

  ‘Ambitious and compelling . . . any reader with a taste for historical fiction will relish the fruits of Starling’s meticulous research, especially on “the obscene underworld of the book trade”’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Starling paints such a vivid picture of Victorian London that when we read of the “golden avenues around Lambeth Palace” we imagine these familiar areas as they were, and not as we now know them. The contrast between dirt, poverty and illness and glitz and glamour is keenly evoked . . . The story itself is gripping, and, more importantly perhaps, the characters are truly convincing’

  Time Out London

  ‘Compelling . . . energy and joie de vivre burst out from the covers . . . The more embroiled Dora gets in the world of Sir Jocelyn and his creepy intermediary, Diprose, the more intriguing and erotic the book becomes . . . Dora Damage is a romp’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Historical fiction is enjoying a heyday at present, particularly that featuring brave and feisty heroines, and does not come much better than The Journal of Dora Damage. The research is impeccable and, most importantly of all, you care desperately what happens’

  Rodney Troubridge, The Bookseller

  ‘A thrilling ride . . . Belinda Starling has written an historical novel of great originality. In Dora Damage, she has created an enormously likable heroine whose battles to assert her independence and freedom will be applauded by every reader . . . The Journal of Dora Damage survives as a memorable and moving testament to her gifts’

  Waterstone’s Books Quarterly

  ‘Peter Carey, Michel Faber, Sarah Waters and, most recently, Jane Harris and DJ Taylor have all successfully recreated the double-standards and soupy atmosphere of the mid-19th century. Belinda Starling is the latest, in a scrupulously researched, racy tale set in London . . . Starling skillfully conjures up a dank, deviant London . . . All the elements of the Victorian city metropolis are faithfully rendered: rampant overcrowding in a terrace resembling “a long line of dirty red siblings”, the stench of mortality and caricatures such as Diprose the dodgy bookseller, Lucinda, the golden child straight from the pages of The Water Babies, and Mrs Eeles, the morbid landlady swathed in black crepe . . . [Starling’s] bustling, energetic book is a worthy addition to the ranks of historical fiction’

  Guardian

  ‘Starling did an enormous amount of research for her debut effort, and it shows. More impressive, she did not let her material get in the way of telling a richly atmospheric story that is fresh, complex and credible; it is an accomplished work that augured good things for the author’

  Los Angeles Times

  ‘A wonderfully vivid tale of intrigue, corruption and deceit’

  * * * * * Red Magazine

  ‘Starling has written an engrossing and unsettling book . . . Dora achieves her modest rebellions, but always with the sense of looking over her shoulder; the effort it took to keep her family safe, clothed and fed made me ache for her’

  Historical Novel Society

  THE JOURNAL OF

  DORA DAMAGE

  BELINDA STARLING

  BLOOMSBURY

  First published 2007

  This paperback edition published 2008

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New York and Berlin

  Copyright © 2006 by Belinda Starling

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978-1-408-80645-6

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  www.bloomsbury.com

  All papers used by Bloomsbury Publishing are natural,

  recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental

  regulations of the country of origin

  For Mike

  ‘Lady bookbinders are supposed to be heaven-born geniuses, who will bring back the old order of things. Those who fancy this are welcome to the delusion; we know better.’

  The British Bookmaker vol 7, 1892–3, p. 7

  ‘Improper books, however useful to the student, or dear to the collector, are not “virginibus puerisque”; they should, I consider, be used with caution even by the mature; they should be looked upon as poisons, and treated as such; should be (so to say) distinctly labeled.’

  William Spencer Ashbee, introduction to

  Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 1877

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  Prologue

  This is my first book, and I am rather proud of it, despite its obvious shortcomings. The red morocco lies unevenly across the boards, the corners have been poorly folded, and there is a grass-stain on the cornflower-blue silk front panel; the title on the cocked spine reads MOIV BIBLL; and across the leather bands, impressions of single letters entwine with a bough of botanical impossibility, sprouting pineapples amidst the oak leaves, acorns and ivy. I made it five years ago, when I feared what failure would have meant; today I cut and ploughed the pages, and discovered that at least they turn well, for the signatures were evenly sewn, and the headband is pliant but resolute. And now I am writing in it, and it will be the first book I have ever written, too.

  My father used to tell me that before we are born, St Bartholomew, patron saint of bookbinders, presents our soul with a choice of two books. One is bound in the softest golden calf and majestically gold-tooled; the other is bound in plain, undyed goatskin straight from the tan-pits. Should the nascent soul choose the former, upon enterin
g this world he will open it to find that the pages of the book are already inscribed with a story of an inescapable fate to be followed to the letter, and on departing it at the time of death, the book will have so deteriorated from constant consultation that the hide will be shoddy and the text illegible. But the pages of the latter book start off blank, and await inscription by the leading of a life of free will according to personal inspiration and divine grace. And the more one’s destiny is pursued, the more brilliance the book acquires, until the binding far surpasses any hide, cloth or paper binding ever produced in the finest ateliers of Paris or Geneva, and is finally worthy of joining the library of human knowledge.

  I have no such pretensions for what follows on these pages. This book is more likely to jump out of my hand, waggle its finger at me and tease me about the events I am trying to make sense of, and I shall have to stuff it into a bottom drawer amongst my stockings and smalls in an attempt to stifle its mocking. Or it may have a greater sense of responsibility, and less of a sense of humour, and reveal within it some approximation of the truth. For whatever one makes of its curious binding, it conceals the contents of my heart, as clearly as if I had cut it open with a scalpel for the anatomists to read.

  Chapter One

  It’s raining, it’s raining,

  There’s pepper in the box,

  And all the little ladies

  Are picking up their frocks.

  I first realised we were in trouble when Peter vanished behind the curtain separating the workshop from the house just as Mrs Eeles came through from the street. She had visited the day before too, asking for him.

  ‘He was here only a minute ago,’ I said, ‘tending the blocking press, or maybe it was the plane.’ I looked to the others for confirmation, and they nodded. The ledger he had been working on for some politician or other was still lying on the bench, a naked manuscript being measured for its new clothes.

  Oh, there were other signs, but I had chosen to ignore them until it was too late, until I was faced with too much proof that business was failing, that we were sinking into poverty, and would soon be destitute. It was like learning to read: one could pore over the incomprehensible scribbles of a book for years, until one sudden day the ciphers seem to rearrange themselves on the very page and yield their meaning at last. So it was with the trail left by Peter Damage, and once the truth dawned on me I could no longer ignore his swollen fingers; the empty tea-caddy on the mantel-piece; the hushed voices between Sven and Jack whenever Peter left the room; the cursing matches that took place, even in front of Lucinda and me. The most blatant sign was the one I had chosen most to overlook: that Lucinda’s fits were occurring more often, and with greater severity.

  Mrs Eeles had a long, straight nose like a candle-snuffer, which was wrinkling at the smell of glue and leather. Everyone who came in here did that, although I never knew why. It was a far better smell than the outside stench of London putrefying in the rain. She looked like a black chicken in her triangular mourning cloak, which dripped over the trestles. Her red face darted from under her veil as she pecked around the frames and presses with agitation, as if she might find Peter amongst the leather parings on the floor. She used to preen and offer him her cheek to kiss, and would call him ‘Pete’, or even ‘Petey’, and tell him to call her ‘Gwin’, and he would chuckle, and wrinkle his round chin down on to his neck out of bashfulness.

  She was about to explain her reason for the visit, but as it was five minutes to twelve, a train rattled by outside our window, and Mrs Eeles raised her hands to command silence.

  ‘ “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown . . .” ’

  We bowed our heads, and while I fingered my mother’s hair-bracelet around my wrist, we waited for the rhythm of the train of death to cease rocking the foundations of the house. Five years before, in 1854, the London Necropolis &National Mausoleum Company had opened its Necropolitan Railway adjacent to Ivy-street, to shuttle corpses and their mourners twenty-five miles down the line to Woking, where they had constructed the largest cemetery in the world. I had heard Mrs Eeles had picked up the houses at the top of Ivy-street on the cheap, having unexpectedly inherited a small fortune from an uncle in the colonies. Whoever sold them to her had not understood her proclivities; a shrewder speculator would have charged her more for these houses, for they were to her as the apartments overlooking Lord’s or the Oval were to a devotee of cricket. The train took the dead to their graves, but it took Mrs Eeles straight to heaven.

  ‘ “. . . the first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” ’

  For Mrs Eeles had an inclination towards death. I do not mean that Mrs Eeles lived in morbid sufferance. I mean that she loved death with a passion: she delectated in mortification. She loved death the way that a child loves sweets: it made her giddy, and giggly, and slightly sick.

  ‘Pardon me for the disturbance,’ she finally said when the moment of death had passed, ‘but there’s the small matter of the rent outstanding.’ Her eyes swept over the shabby little room, which was harshly lit by two naked gas flames, because I had taken the lamps into the house to clean again. I hoped that she would find no cause for concern in the way we were keeping her property. From the battered benches, peeling wallpaper, greasy leather aprons and clammy air, one would be hard pressed to believe that objects of great beauty were produced here.

  ‘The rent?’ I said, with genuine innocence. Peter paid Mrs Eeles every quarter; they had their own arrangements, and an understanding that Damage’s Bookbinders was not to lower the tone of Ivy-street. There had been a dreadful shindy only last summer, when Mrs Eeles let number six to a group of girls who claimed to be opera-dancers appearing at the Alhambra. She would never have considered that type as a rule, only that the house had a leaky roof and a draughty cellar, no matter how many workmen tried to patch it up. But when Mrs Eeles discovered they were what one might call gay, of the seediest type, she threw them into the street wearing nothing but their scarlet drawers, and hurled their fancy dresses after them. Oh, she could be a devil with her dander up, but she did see to the drains, unlike other landlords. Besides, I had heard that the late Mr Eeles, who had been a marble mason, used to throw his boots at her, so Peter always used to tell me that it was fortunate she had tenants to throw hers at. She and Peter had a special understanding, what with their obsessions with respectability and mortality: there was nothing that impressed Peter so much as the dignity enshrouding the payment of one’s debt of nature.

  ‘Apologies for the meddling of you into it, my dear,’ she continued, ‘but I can’t find myself to catch your husband these days. Not that it’s a worry to me, as you’re honest souls, and I shan’t be throwing you out on to the street, I’m sure, but it is now three weeks and two days behind.’

  ‘Is it now? I’ll get Peter to see to it at once,’ I said.

  ‘And how fare you, young master Jack? Keeping your feet nice and dry in here, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ he muttered, continuing to glue down the grey moiré endpapers of a volume of plain, unvarnished calf, entitled, The Law and Practice of Joint-Stock Companies. Jack Tapster lived right up by the river, and was flooded out every other year, but the river had been his family’s livelihood – or deathlihood – ever since his father ran off one night after a prize-fight and never came back. Mud-larks, they were, and turd-collectors. Mrs Eeles had brought him to us, as, though the Tapsters lacked respectability, they had not just the whiff but the stink of tragedy about them, which she could not resist. Besides, Jack was often called ‘The Skull’, not only from the black grimacing skull tattooed on his left bicep, but also owing to his skeletal appearance and his unusual cleverness, so to her he was a living memento mori, which
may have had something to do with her favouring of him for our apprentice.

  Mrs Eeles didn’t care to look at Sven, who was German, despite him being the best finisher south of the Thames. It was a miracle he was still with us; he had come over on his Wanderjahre in search of work and had never left. He was fine-tooling around a copper-plate let into the cover of Rules and Articles of War (Better Government of All Her Majesty’s Forces); second-in-command after Peter, he was clearly intent on not catching my – or her – eye.

  ‘Peter must’ve forgotten, strange enough,’ I said. ‘He’s been awful busy, Mrs Eeles, what with Christmas and things.’ I became aware that I was blunting the needle on the wood of the sewing-frame, and Lucinda was clutching my skirt, pale as candlewax.

  Mrs Eeles started to make her way towards the door. ‘Ho, dearie, never need to worry about you Damages, do I?’ she said heartily. ‘You’re a pattern young family.’

  Despite the talk about her, I liked Mrs Eeles. She fussed about the wrong kind of people, but she never knew that I’d seen her from our box-room window, perched on her back porch, knees up outside her hitched skirts, smoking on a pipe. I could not tell her either, for I did not know how to without letting her know that I did not mind, that I thought she was quite the screamer for it. Sometimes she even came rent-collecting in her yellow curl-papers, when she must have thought she had already thoroughly brushed and fluffed her feathers.

  I picked Lucinda up, and together we stood at the door and waved Mrs Eeles off into the gloomy drizzle. She lived round the corner from us, in the house two along from the workshop. Her empire only extended to the top ends of these two streets, where she could keep at bay the seedier folk that so troubled her sense of decorum, namely Fenians, Italians and Jews. On our side of the road was a terrace of fifteen houses, like a long line of dirty red siblings with the same narrow faces and familial features. Each had three floors with two rooms on each floor, one front and one back, plus a basement, except for ours, the first – or fifteenth – house, number two, Ivy-street, which had no basement but two small cellars, too small to use for anything other than storing coal and mixing paste. But the house did have an extra room off the ground floor where two roads met (and where a public-house should have been, were it not for a hiccup of town planning), and it was this room that became the binding workshop. So far, the neighbours had not complained about our industry, even though we could hear them plain as pewter through the damp walls.