Erica Eisdorfer - The Wet Nurses Tale

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G. P. PUTNAMS SONS
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Copyright 2009 by Erica Eisdorfer

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Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eisdorfer, Erica.
The wet nurses tale / Erica Eisdorfer.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-10896-3

1. Wet-nursesFiction. 2. Mothers and sonsFiction. 3. Family secretsFiction.
4. Great BritainHistoryVictoria, 1837-1901Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.I77 W
813.6dc22

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers
and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author
assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.
Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume
any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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To Sophie & Charlotte

... the moral state of the nurse is to be taken into account...

FROM Mrs Beetons Book of Household Management, 1861

One

T here was snow on the ground when my time came. Id expected pain but, Reader! How could this be! I bellowed, I know I did.

Its like shitting a pumpkin, it is, I cried.

Shut up, if you can, girl, said Dinah, the midwife, for youre hurting my ears and youll be fine in the end. Im feared your babyll be deef with the noise youre making.

Ill never be fine in my end again, I panted, which made her laugh herself, but then the pains started back up and so did my shrieks.

When it was all over, I cried for my mother, to think what the poor thing suffered for all of us. And then I did what Id seen my mother do for my whole childhood, and that was to open my shift for the baby and let it nurse.

My mother told me that at first, she didnt take in other peoples children because she wasnt a cow now, was she? But when Father wasnt drunk, hed become frustrated at his wifes constant greatness and hed hit her. One day she took someone elses child to nurse along with her own and she was paid for it, more than she ever made plaiting straw for hats or for selling eggs. And so she gave that money to him as a little extra and he drank it away and was a lamb for a week. She seemed to have milk for both her own and another, so why waste it, said she.

Mother, I said to her once, when I was small, will I nurse a babe as you do?

Well, my dear, said she, youll need more than that to do it, and she pointed at my own flat front and then laughed and hugged me to her so the baby in her arms gave a great squawk and then a belch. I recall her words for twasnt long before I began to grow, and when I stopped, well, I could nurse the whole of England now, is how I can say it best.

My name is Susan Rose. Here I sit in a ladys house with a ladys babe at my breast, and its where Ive been before though the house was different and the baby too. Ive got what rich ladies need right here in front of me and I learned to do what I do by example. Its my mothers milk that washed me up on this shore. It has got me to places far from my own mother, and it has got me close to those I should have avoided and it has got me far from my own hopes, but I dream still. Nursings good for dreaming, for it takes a good deal of sitting still.

In this house, the Chandlers it is, I nurse a pair of little ones. Im feeding one now and theres another awaiting in the cradle across the room: I can hear it mewling for me already and if it wouldnt disturb this wee one, almost asleep now, Id get up from my chair, with him still suckling away, the dear, and fetch the next one. But it would. This ones a persnickety little mite, and doesnt like to be jostled once his eyes begin to droop. The girls different. Its as if shes already accustomed to waiting for her brothers leavings and to catching sleep where she can. Of the two of them, Id bet on her.

My mistress is the shrew, Mrs. Chandler. She hates those babies for losing her her figure, and she bids her maid lace her as tight as she can bear it, which sours her temper yet more. She bedecks the babies in cheap lace that scratches so they squall when shes showing them and so who could wonder why they fret? Yesterday, her mother tried to say something to her about it but shed have none of it. Mother, she said all high about herself, this is Chantilly and its from Paris and thats all there is to it. Mrs. Haver, as the ladys mother is called even by her son-in-law, catched my eye for a second but I looked away. I dont want to lose my position even though twins are hard.

Mr. Chandler loves his wife and thats a nice thing I can say. Hes a barrister and young but quite ugly though hell get better, I think. I notice things like thishow something appears now and what I think itll look like later on. Thats the thing of gazing at babies. It makes you right good at predicting. Shes still angry at him for filling her in the first place, is how I see it, and she hasnt yet let him touch her, at least it doesnt seem thus, from the way he gazes at her as if he could eat her. Shell give in to him, I suppose, sooner or later, when she wants some bauble, or when natural urges strike her, which they will, once she stops hurting down below. Her bosom is still almost as big as my own, but those bladders will burst soon: thats how we put it, my mum and I, though its not a very pretty image and I hope youll forgive me for it.

Mrs. Chandlers house is not as clean as I could like. Theres often grease on my cup and on the handle of my fork. And just yesterday, I saw one of the housemaids flirting with the farriers boy for a whole half an hour and then give short shrift to the linen. I see a lot through that window, as I sit still at my duty. I do love a window. In my first position, I had no window, just a closet off a larger room, and to pass the time I sang. I know a lot of songs and for that I thank my mother, who sang to the ten of us every day over her own duties.

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