Lizzie

1: Liverpool and London — 1890

There was, for Lizzie, a sense of discovery — no, of homecoming. Standing at the ship’s railing, listening to the groaning and hissing of the steam machinery as it hoisted the trunks and valises from belowdecks, she felt less a foreigner than she did a returning native. This England, this sceptered isle — today wreathed in ominously shifting gray clouds that promised rain — called to her from more than two centuries past, when a man named John Borden left his home in Kent to seek his fortune in the colonies.

Had he felt, upon his arrival in Boston, the same keen anticipation she felt today in this vast and sprawling harbor? Had the skies over that alien port seemed as utterly appropriate to him as did these leaden skies above Liverpool now? Appropriate, yes; sunshine would have been a disappointment, a contradiction of expectations.

The heat in Fall River a week ago had been intolerable. New York City had been even less hospitable, its temperatures hovering in the mid-nineties, the noise and confusion of the docks miraculously disappearing the moment the women boarded the Teutonic and found their cabins. But for all its splendor and speed, the great Ocean Greyhound, as it had been advertised, had seemed only another necessary delay, five days — almost six — before this moment, this already cherished instant, when she could stand here, the wind wet and raw on her face, the harbor crowded with hundreds of ships and boats defying the waves, and glimpse there in the distance the rooftops of an England recalled as though she had been here countless times before.

The transatlantic journey had not been shortened by the fact that Anna had been seasick almost every moment. They had invited her along, after months of preparation and consultation, only because first-cabin accommodations were so dreadfully expensive ($60 to $140, depending upon the location!) and none of them could afford the luxury of travel in an unshared room. It had been Lizzie’s misfortune — and she hoped to correct this as concerned future hotel arrangements — to have drawn a short straw similar to Anna’s from a hat belonging to Rebecca Welles, the chance draw determining exactly how the ladies would be traveling au paire, as Rebecca had put it in her somewhat strained French.

Even under the best of circumstances, Anna Borden was a dour, pale-faced woman, entirely humorless, and given to wearing a veil day and night, perhaps to hide her plainness, perhaps to ward off unwanted glances from foreign men, of which there had been many on the voyage out. The fact that they were both named Borden had encouraged far too many people to ask, “Oh, are you related?” which they weren’t — except perhaps for some common ancestor in the dim, distant past: there were now something more than four hundred Bordens in Fall River, most of whom Lizzie didn’t even know. She claimed to the other two women in their party that she had never seen Anna without a veil covering her face except when she was vomiting in the ship’s toilet, but this was an exaggeration. Anna slept with her face naked to the night airs. And snored loudly, as though to dispel whatever evil spirits might be tempted to invade her nostrils when the veil was tucked away in her dressing case. She stood veiled and shivering beside Lizzie now, clutching the rail for dear life although the ship was virtually motionless, breathing deeply as though in imminent danger of vomiting again.

Of the three women traveling with her, Lizzie liked Rebecca Welles best. Somewhat younger than Lizzie — she was twenty-seven or — eight, Lizzie wasn’t quite sure — she was a well read and quite attractive young woman with a passable knowledge of French and a smattering of German as well, which Lizzie hoped would stand the party in good stead on the final leg of their journey. They had met the way so many unmarried women in Fall River did, at a church function, and it was Lizzie who had convinced her to join the church’s Chinese department, where they struggled side by side teaching English to the sons and daughters of the town’s laundrymen. In many respects Rebecca — though her forebears were mixed Welsh and English — looked Chinese herself, with masses of straight black hair and eyes the color of loam, somewhat slanted over prominent cheekbones.

The Liverpool harbor resembled nothing so much as a giant canal — miles long and a thousand feet wide, Lizzie guessed — lined with great walls of heavy cut stone divided into berths large enough to accommodate any seagoing vessel. Everywhere she looked, she could see ships and smaller boats disgorging cargo, the markings and flags on the vessels indicating they had come from ports everywhere on the face of — there now! The tenders that would carry them to the customhouse were approaching the ship. Further along the railing, Felicity Chambers, her blond locks blowing in the wind, waved at one of the approaching boats, or rather at the pilot guiding it alongside; she could not imagine how Felicity could even see the man through the grimy window of the pilothouse, but waving she was, and in a thoroughly unladylike manner that caused Rebecca, by her side, to give her an equally unladylike poke with her elbow. Felicity was twenty-four years old, destined one day to become the wife of one of Fall River’s businessmen, Lizzie guessed, a dimpled, curly-headed little thing quite remarkably endowed by nature and possessed of all the cute mannerisms Europeans expected of small-town American girls traveling abroad.

One day, strolling the deck in bright sunshine on the voyage out, Lizzie had chanced to overhear a remark made by an Englishwoman returning to her native land. As Felicity flitted past, the woman said, “So American. Beautiful, rich — and vulgar.” Lizzie had taken this as a comment less directed at Felicity’s blond, blue-eyed good looks and extravagant figure than at the particularly lavish way she was dressed for a daytime, topside constitutional. And whereas she quite agreed that her traveling companion had looked overdressed and inappropriately bejeweled in contrast to the Europeans making the homeward voyage, she nonetheless felt a fierce, protective loyalty. Staring the Englishwoman down, letting her know with her penetrating gaze that she’d been overheard, she had deliberately gone to Felicity, embraced her, kissed her on the cheek, and walked arm in arm with her into the grand saloon.

“Oh, it’s England, it’s England!” Felicity said now, and waved this time at the distant anonymous shore.

At the booking office in the Birkenhead Station, Lizzie was informed (and she was already beginning to regret her role as elected treasurer) that the distance from Liverpool to London was two hundred miles, and that a first-class ticket would cost one pound, eight shillings, which she clumsily calculated as seven U.S. dollars, or approximately three and a half cents a mile, which she supposed was something of a bargain. They followed a porter in blue livery to the luggage van (they called it luggage here, she noticed, and not baggage) and watched as he labeled each piece Paddington and then hefted the lot of them inside; he was a giant of a man, who tossed their trunks into the van with little effort and even less care. Lizzie waited in vain for a receipt of some sort, but apparently the British confidence in human nature was sublime, and when she saw that none was forthcoming, she began rummaging in her purse for the expected tip.

An Englishman was standing nearby, tipping a porter who had performed a similar service for him only moments before. Lizzie detected at once that only a single bronze coin changed hands — twopence, as she reckoned in the swift exchange. Had she grossly overtipped the custom-shed porter? She fished in her purse, found what she hoped was a half shilling, and handed the silver coin to the porter. He gave her a baleful look until she added several bronze coins to the one in his palm, and then his craggy face broke into a wide gap-toothed grin, and he murmured, “God bless, madam,” and led them immediately to the first-class compartment of the nearest passenger car, where he stood by the steps and bowed them aboard, his cap in his hand.

No sooner were they seated than a freckle-faced, towheaded newsboy wearing a cap tilted over half his face, a loose baggy sweater that came almost to his thighs, and kneebreeches falling loose over equally fallen stockings, came along the platform crying, “Papers, papers!” and stopped at the open door to the compartment. “Papers, ladies?” he asked, and Felicity, making herself comfortable in the seat next to the window, looked at the array of newspapers he proffered, rolled her blue eyes, and said, “Oh, my, whichever one shall we read?”

“Depends on your politics, miss,” the newsboy said. “If you’re Gladstonian, I’d advise the News. If on the other hand you’re Tory, you might do well to take either the Times or the Standard!”

“We’ll have the Times,” Lizzie said.

“Are we Tory?” Felicity asked.

“Y’could be worse, miss,” the newsboy said, grinning, and counted out the change for the coin Lizzie handed him. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and Lizzie wondered when “miss” became “ma’am” in Europe. In Fall River, she was Miss Lizzie. Here in England, Felicity was miss, but she herself had been ma’am or madam on more than one occasion now. She had celebrated her thirtieth birthday on the nineteenth day of July, three days before they’d boarded the Teutonic. Felicity was twenty-four. Did those six years make such a difference here? Vaguely troubled, she opened her purse and was dropping the loose change into it when the door on the corridor side suddenly opened.

A man with the word Inspector stamped onto a round brass plate pinned to his cap stepped into the compartment and said, “Tickets, please, tickets.” She rummaged in her purse for the tickets she had purchased, regretting more and more the chore the others had imposed upon her. The uniformed man took the tickets, and with a heavy punch gouged into each of them a pie-shaped wedge. “Have a pleasant journey,” he said, and touched the peak of his cap. Outside on the platform, there was a sudden bustle of activity as uniformed men ran along slamming the doors of the cars. Just as suddenly, the train began to move.

She sat opposite Felicity in the narrow compartment, their skirted knees almost touching, and began reading the London Times.

They learned soon enough that the train offered none of the comforts or conveniences to which they were accustomed on American railroad coaches. Not anywhere in the car was there a toilet stand, a closet, a heating apparatus or a drinking-water cylinder. The weather was brisk compared to what they were used to in July, and with the windows closed, the compartment was quite close. Anna complained of a headache. Felicity, after a tour of the car and a search for toilet facilities, indelicately suggested that had she known such accommodations would be lacking, she would have carried along her own slop pail. Rebecca, now reading the Times Lizzie had already read from first page to last, visibly winced at Felicity’s comment.

It was with considerable relief, therefore, that they learned from the inspector, who flung open the corridor door again just as the train was pulling into the Chester station, that they would be stopping here for twenty minutes should the ladies care to stretch their legs. He assured them he would make certain that no one occupied their seats, and Lizzie wondered if he expected a tip for his concern. As if to confirm her surmise, the inspector returned just as the train was pulling into the station, carrying a narrow strip of paper dripping with paste. The paper, Lizzie saw as he affixed it to the window of their compartment, was a printed form that he had filled in with pencil. It read:

What then to tip this great grinning ape who now backed away from the window and stood beaming with pride at his primitive accomplishment? According to Lizzie’s calculations, a shilling was the equivalent of twenty-five cents. But surely even a man with the word Inspector emblazoned in brass on his cap would not expect so exorbitant a fee for posting his simple bill and insuring his vigilance. Would a half shilling suffice? She glanced across the compartment to Rebecca and by the look on her face saw that she was engaged in the same process of calculation. Rebecca shrugged behind the waiting inspector’s back. Lizzie dug into her purse and handed the man a shilling after all. He seemed satisfied; at any rate, he touched the peak of his cap before he left the compartment.

His little sign, in fact, worked remarkably well almost all the way to London. But as the train was pulling out of the Oxford station, the door on the corridor side was yanked open, and a man peered into the compartment and said, “Excuse me, ladies, may we join you? The other first-class sections are fully occupied.”

She wondered for a moment who the “we” might be; she had no desire to share the compartment with two strange men. But the man seemed to be utterly alone, a tall, brown-eyed Englishman (judging from his speech), wearing a single-breasted lounge jacket cut to button four but worn to button one, the sleeves short enough to show his fashionable, colored linen cuffs, his close, small-buttoned trousers cut well up to reveal his fancy patent leather buttoned boots. He wore beneath the jacket a vest with a small check repeated in the fabric of his hat, which in every other respect resembled a bowler. Like most of the other men Lizzie had seen here in England (and it was a relief from the bearded men at home), he was clean-shaven except for short side-whiskers and a mustache. Without waiting for their reply, he threw the small valise he was carrying up onto the overhead rack, said, “Thank you,” and then ducked out into the corridor again and called, “Allie! I’ve found us some spaces!” and backed away a few steps, waiting.

The woman who appeared in the doorframe was quite the most beautiful woman Lizzie had ever seen in her life. She stood almost as tall as her companion, some five feet eight or nine inches, Lizzie guessed, her extraordinary height exaggerated by the modest gabled toque she wore, a close-fitting hat trimmed with velvet and feathers, its inverted V-front exposing a fringe of frizzed blond hair. The toque was green, echoing the green of her eyes, as deep as any forest glade, perfectly matching the Norfolk jacket bodice and plain-fronted skirt she wore. Her face was as pale as milk, a perfect oval with a generous mouth and an aquiline nose. Her eyebrows lifted slightly when she saw how nearly full the compartment already was. “I do hope we shan’t be crowding you,” she said, and behind her the man nodded a belated apology.

“Please join us,” Lizzie said graciously, and first the woman and then the man entered the compartment. She had given her window seat to Rebecca when the train left Warwick. The woman sat beside her now on her right — Lizzie noticed with relief that her bustle was small and fashionable — the faintest scent of eau de cologne wafting about her as she smoothed her skirt. She was wearing black stockings, Lizzie saw, and laced shoes with rounded toes and low heels. The man sat diagonally across from Lizzie, beside Felicity, who had swapped her window seat with Anna.

“This is so very kind of you,” the woman said.

Her voice was pitched rather low, sounding more like an adolescent boy’s than a woman’s, somewhat breathless now after her supposed dash for the train and the struggle to find a seat. The man, Lizzie noticed, though he was in the company of ladies, had not yet removed his absurd checked bowler. She immediately assumed he was ill-mannered. And yet, the woman seemed so fashionably dressed. And, certainly, their speech hadn’t sounded at all like what Lizzie had expected of lower-class Englishmen. Both of them were silent now. The man shifted his weight and stretched his long legs. The woman stared directly ahead of her, her slender, gloved hands folded in her lap.

“Allow me to introduce ourselves,” Lizzie said, turning to the woman and seeming to take her quite by surprise. “I’m Lizzie Borden, and these are my friends. Felicity Chambers...”

“Charmed,” Felicity said.

“Rebecca Welles...”

“How do you do?”

“And Anna Borden... there by the window.”

Anna nodded behind her veil.

“Americans, of course,” the man said, and smiled.

“Yes,” Lizzie said, and returned the smile.

“How often would you say I’ve taken this train in the past five years, Allie?” he asked the woman.

“Countless times,” she said.

“Countless times,” he agreed, nodding. “And never has anyone but an American spoken to me.”

“Nôtre sang-froid habituel,” the woman said, and added in explanation, “We English, you know,” and smiled.

“Even if you hadn’t been so kind as to speak first,” the man said, “I’d have known you were American.”

“Oh?” Lizzie said. “How?”

“Only lords, fools and Americans ride first-class,” the man said, and laughed.

“Since you, my dear Albert, are neither an American nor a lord...” the woman said, and airily waved aside the rest of the sentence.

“A fool for certain,” the man said, shaking his head. “The smoking compartment’s packed full, you know. Book a first-class ticket and ride all the way to London without a cigar.”

“Please don’t ask the ladies if they’d mind,” the woman said.

“Would you mind?” the man asked, looking across at Lizzie.

“Anna isn’t feeling well,” Lizzie said apologetically.

“Oh, what a pity,” the woman said, and glanced about at the other women, as though trying to recall which of them was Anna. Her glance settled unerringly on the veiled figure huddled beside Felicity in the window seat on the other side of the compartment. “Forgive me,” she said, “I’m Alison Newbury. This is my husband, Albert.”

“Allie and Albie,” the man said.

“The ‘Albie’, of course, is to distinguish him from our late and eternally lamented prince consort,” Alison said drily.

“Who but a prince would book first-class?” Albert said. “Is the ‘Lizzie’ short for Elizabeth?”

“No, that’s my full name,” Lizzie said. “Or rather, part of it. It’s Lizzie Andrew, the whole of it.”

“Are you and the other lady related?” Alison asked.

“No, we’re not.”

“Small world then, isn’t it?” Albert said. “Andrew, did you say?”

“I think my father was hoping for a boy.”

“Oh, dear,” Alison said, “how dreadful for you,” and patted Lizzie’s hand.

“I rather like that, actually,” Albert said. “The Andrew part. If ever we were to have any children...”

“Bite your tongue,” Alison said.

“I’d choose to name him Andrew,” Albert said, and shrugged.

“Please note the male posture,” Alison said.

“Posture?” Albert said.

“The certainty that if and when we ever had a child, God forbid, it would be a boy.” She smiled at Lizzie. “Is your father’s name Andrew?”

“Yes. Andrew Jackson Borden.”

“After one of your presidents?” Albert asked.

“I would imagine. He’s never said.”

“Have you been traveling long in England?” Alison asked.

“We just arrived this morning,” Felicity said brightly. “From New York.”

“Oh, you poor dears,” Alison said. “You must be utterly exhausted!”

“Not really,” Rebecca said. “It was a very comfortable crossing.”

“I was seasick most of the time,” Anna said from behind her veil.

“You poor dear,” Alison said.

“Do you make your home in New York?” Albert asked.

“No, we’re from Massachusetts,” Rebecca said.

“Ah, yes,” Albert said.

“Fall River,” Felicity said.

“Afraid I don’t know it,” Albert said. “Where will you be staying in London?”

“Don’t be cheeky, darling,” Alison said.

“A perfectly proper question,” Albert said, and stroked his mustache. “Surely the ladies are staying somewhere.”

“The Albemarle Hotel,” Lizzie said.

“The Hotel Albemarle,” he corrected. “One must be exceedingly careful in London. I once asked a cabbie to take me to the Victoria Hotel, which any fool knows is on Northumberland Avenue. He pulled up in front of what seemed a gin palace, bearing the sign plain enough — Victoria Hotel. I told him I wanted the one on Northumberland, and he promptly said, ‘Then why didn’t you say Hotel Victoria?’ I might add that he charged me a fare and a half to emphasize the distinction.”

“You mustn’t frighten the ladies,” Alison said. “That’s just reopened, hasn’t it? The Albemarle?”

“Rebuilt it from top to bottom,” Albert said, nodding. “Did a handsome job of it, too.”

“Near St. James’s Street, isn’t it?”

“Corner of Piccadilly and Albemarle Street,” Albert said. “Choice location, very fine indeed. Made it over in the French style. I fancy you’ll like it. But why on earth have you taken this train?”

“Isn’t this the train to London?” Anna said, alarmed.

“Indeed it is,” Albert said, “but one of the others might have been more convenient for you.”

He went on to explain that four different railway companies ran trains from Liverpool to London. The train they were on, operated by the Great Western Railway, had taken them through Chester, Birmingham, Warwick and Oxford and was now on its way to Paddington Station, which was rather more distant from their hotel than some of the London stations the other lines went into. Moreover, because of the many stops along the way, the rail journey was lengthier than it might have been; two of the other lines offered shorter, swifter routes.

“But this route is scenic,” Alison said.

“If you enjoy looking at the rooftops of middle-class English homes,” Albert said.

“Besides, we never would have met otherwise, would we?” Alison said, and again patted Lizzie’s hand.

It was Albert who also informed them that they could have had their luggage shipped directly to the hotel rather than having it knocked about from pillar to post all the w^ay to London and then from Paddington Station where they might, on a Sunday, have difficulty getting transportation on to the hotel. Lizzie was grateful when the conversation shifted to less dismaying ground. The Newburys, she learned, made their home in London, to which they were returning after a weekend visit to Alison’s cousin in Oxford, a trip necessitated by the fact that they were leaving for a holiday on the Continent next Wednesday. This led to a discussion of the itinerary the women had planned for their own holiday (Lizzie repeated the British word with great pleasure, and hoped she didn’t sound affected) and the Newburys, who turned out to be widely traveled, helpfully pointed out the tourist attractions and restaurants that shouldn’t be missed.

She was surprised when, at the end of an acquaintance that had seemed entirely pleasant but altogether too brief, Alison offered her a visting card upon which was imprinted her name, address and telephone number, and asked her to be in touch should they need any sort of assistance in London. Albert reminded his wife that they were leaving for Paris next Wednesday, and Alison said, “Hush, darling, I meant until then, surely.” To Lizzie’s greater surprise, it was Albert who made certain that their baggage was transported from the luggage van to a large waiting vehicle, and then hailed another four-wheeler for the ladies themselves. When he tipped the porter for his services, Lizzie protested vigorously but in vain. When he advised the cabman to keep an eye out for the luggage carrier ahead, and gave him the number of the vehicle, Lizzie wondered aloud how they might have managed without him, and Albert — pleased and flushing — assured her it was no trouble at all. The women shook hands all around. Just before the Newburys’ hansom cab pulled away, Alison smiled and waved. Her eyes looked intensely green in the slanting ray of sunshine that touched her exquisite face.

Standing by the open fourth-floor windows in her nightdress, looking down at Piccadilly, Lizzie listened to what could only be considered a roar in comparison to last night’s hush.

In the early morning sunshine there was even more traffic below than she had seen on her several visits to New York. Looking down at the cabs and hansoms flying about below in such a hot and reckless fashion, she wondered how she would ever get from one side of the street to the other without being crushed beneath the thundering hooves of the horses.

In one of the beds across the room, Rebecca murmured in her sleep and then rolled over. Lizzie had suggested, when the women were registering for their rooms in the ornate Renaissance lobby below, that perhaps they should share the accommodations throughout Europe on a rotating basis (this to avoid Anna’s snoring, though she made no mention of it) and the others had readily agreed. They had paired off haphazardly, too tired to give any thought to contriving a system that would serve them all through Europe, and then had gone upstairs to unpack before taking their evening meal in the ground-floor dining room, which the headwaiter proudly informed them had been decorated in the style of Francis I. He blinked politely when Felicity asked him if that had been a British king.

The long day, which had started when they’d been awakened aboard ship at dawn, had finally caught up with them midway during their supper. Only Felicity ordered dessert; perhaps she had noticed that the predominant style of beauty among Englishwomen seemed to consist of a heavy bust, a narrow, corseted waist and a large bottom, and was determined to go back to Fall River looking as much like one of them as was possible. Anna, who’d scarcely eaten a bite anyway, abruptly excused herself and went directly upstairs to the room she would be sharing with Felicity. Rebecca, her eyes looking somewhat glazed, excused herself shortly afterwards; she was already asleep when Lizzie went up to their room at a little before nine.

She changed into her nightdress, padding quietly about the room so as not to awaken Rebecca, and then went to stand by the open windows, surprised by the utter calm of the city. A hush, rather, broken only by the muffled sound of distant vehicles. The scent of flowers and of freshly cut hay wafted through the open windows. Smiling she went to her bed and sat on the edge of it, savoring the silence. And then she lay down and pulled the covers to her chin, and the hush was broken suddenly by the sound of Big Ben tolling the hour, echoed by the liquid chiming of yet more bells on the muzzle of the night. She listened to the tolling of the bells in all the clock towers, and when they had faded, and when the hush was complete again, she drifted off into a deep and peaceful sleep.

“Is it morning?” Rebecca asked from the bed behind her, blinking at the sunshine.

“Oh, yes!” Lizzie said.

She might have been in Boston, the two cities seemed that similar. Not those sections of Boston that had been rebuilt since the Great Fire, certainly not, but those that had survived. London, like Boston, seemed to be a city of three-story buildings, a third of them stucco painted drab, the remainder fashioned of brick or stone. There was a quiet modesty to the buildings, an air of substance and dignity. The similarity startled her; perhaps it had to do with the fact that Boston, before the Revolution, had never been anything but British.

The soot! Dirt of the dirtiest sort! Corinthian columns with one side of them a pale gray and the other a black as deep as midnight. St. Paul’s, and Westminster Abbey and the squat Bank of England wearing robes of black soot except for their very tops, where the stonework stood out mysteriously pristine. Rebecca explained that this was because the British burned soft coal. Anna was certain that all those flying black globules would bring on a congestion of the nose, the throat and the lungs. Felicity, as only she might have noticed, commented that even the collars of the men’s shirts appeared black.

On their first morning in London, they went to the Tower, of course, and then the National Gallery, and took their midday meal in one of the precious few luncheon places recommended for ladies. The guide books had suggested the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus as convenient to the art galleries, and Gatti’s in the Strand for a meal that was not too costly. They settled on the Criterion and ate in the basement room as the guide books had advised, rather than upstairs where the same dishes were served at higher prices. As it was le diner Parisien would have cost them five shillings had they chosen it; they did not, because they intended to be in France within a fortnight. Instead they selected the table d’hote bill of fare at three and six, which Lizzie calculated to be something close to a dollar in American money.

Two things struck her as decidedly odd during lunch. The first of these was that although this was certainly a first-class restaurant, the men not only carried their hats into the dining room but carried them on their heads until they took their seats, this despite the presence of so many ladies in the room. The observation caused her to reevaluate her first impression of Albert Newbury, who’d kept his hat on his head all during the ride from Oxford to London. The second thing was that it was impossible to get a glass of water. The ladies were quick to learn that they were expected to order wine with their meal. As Alison Newbury would later tell her, the English people, when thirsty, drank wine, beer “or something stronger”. The simple white wine they ordered added an additional shilling and sixpence to their bill. Neither Lizzie nor Anna touched a drop of it.

After lunch Anna went back to the hotel for a nap, and the three other women — freed from her hypochondriacal tyranny — simply wandered the narrow streets at will, as they had read unescorted young ladies might do if they dressed sedately, walked fast and looked directly ahead of them. This was the part of their day, thus far, that most pleased Lizzie, although she was uncommonly aware of her frank and level gaze which, the guide books had warned, could easily be misinterpreted by foreigners. American girls — and she had never honestly thought about it before — had a habit, it seemed, of directly meeting the eyes of strangers, and she had no desire to be followed by any man eager for the chance of possible amusement. But, oh, so much to see in this marvelous city! Was she to walk with her head lowered and her eyes averted like a nun on her way to vespers?

Everything was new to the women, everything excited their interest. Like children deposited suddenly in a magic kingdom with unexpected treasures, they marveled at the simplest things that met their receptive eyes, chattering gaily, disregarding the warnings in the guidebooks, pointing and staring and rushing on to the next unimaginably clever wonder! The streetlamps here were taller than the ones at home (gas illuminated, of course, although the Hotel Albemarle was fully electrified), and each of them was equipped with a long, thin ladder resting against it, presumably to facilitate the lamplighter’s task. The large iron cylinders on virtually every street corner were entirely alien to them, and when Lizzie timidly asked a policeman what they might be, he answered, “Why, pillar posts, ma’am!” and when he saw her bewildered expression, added, “In which to post your letters, ma’am.” In almost the very next moment, a letter carrier dressed like a toy soldier in a little cap and blue sack suit with a red collar unlocked the cylinder and relieved it of its contents, carrying a stack of letters and parcels to a waiting mail wagon that resembled nothing so much as a little red circus cart on wheels, the letters V. R. painted on the side of it in gold.

“For Victoria Regina!” Rebecca translated triumphantly, and the women giggled and rushed off the pavement, having learned that crossing a London street was done in two stages. First you ran to a granite-block, oval-shaped platform in the middle of the roadway, a lamppost sprouting in its center, its circumference fortified by stout iron posts to ward off wagons. Next you caught your breath there while an avalanche of cabs, hansoms and horse-drawn vehicles of every shape and size thundered past, and then you rushed from the island to the other side of the street. If you were fortunate, a bobby would dash courageously into the maelstrom, raise up his gloved hand and, as if by silent proclamation, cause the horses and the rigs behind them to stop miraculously in their tracks. There were more policemen in London than Lizzie had ever seen anywhere! Wherever she looked, there seemed to be another bobby. (“Quite handsome, too,” Felicity remarked.)

Crowds, oh, my Lord, the crowds! They seemed endless, rushing along the pavements (they were called pavements here, the women had learned from a bobby, and not sidewalks as they were at home), darting in and out of the various shops and restaurants, hurrying by in quadruple procession, risking life and limb as they raced the horse-drawn traffic in the streets, dashing from curb to island to the safety of curb again, six million people (though they seemed far more) going about their daily business as if there were not these ogling, overwhelmed, confused and delighted Americans in their very midst.

And the street cries, oh, the marvelous street cries! Everywhere about them there was a babble of voices as the vendors hawked their wares in a veritable operatic chorus. Here stood a bootblack shouting, “Clean yer boots, shine ’em, sir?” And just beside him was a man standing behind a tray of nuts bawling, “Jaw-work, up and under jaw-work, a whole pot for a ha’ penny, hazel nuts!” And then, should the hazel nuts not appeal, “Warnuts, a penny for ten!” There were chimney sweeps whose faces were soiled a black as deep as their garments, shouting “Soot!” and “Sweep, ho!” and then turning to see that their equally begrimed apprentices were following close behind. On one corner stood a man selling meat on a skewer, and when Felicity wondered aloud what sort of meat it was, the man said, “Cat’s meat, miss, you eat it without no salt!” and then bellowed to a passing gentleman, “Cat’s meat, sir?” A man, carrying his tools and apparatus buckled in a leather bag, shouted, “Mend yer bellows, mend ‘em well!” and just beside him stood a frail young woman dressed in tatters and piping in a high, clear voice, “Come buy me fine myrtles and roses!”

The chorus became a blend of sound that was not at all unpleasant — “Stinkin’ shrimps! Lor’, ’ow they do stink today!” — a constant reminder of the rush of tumbling humanity in this city — “Buy my windmills, ha’ penny a piece!” — male and female voices, aged men and withered crones, young boys and fresh-faced girls, “All a-growin’, all a-blowin’! Knives, combs and inkhorns! Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender! Quick periwinkles! Sheep’s trotters, hot! Cherries-o, ripe cherries-o! Lily-white mussels, penny a quart! Doormats, want? Brick dust today? Buy any clove water? Hot rolls! Rhubarb! Songs, three yards a penny! New Yorkshire cakes! Buy my matches, maids, my nice small, pointed matches! Buy a Beaupot! Buy a broom! Hot cross buns! Young lambs to sell! Tuppence a hundred, cockles! New-laid eggs, eight a groat! Samphire!”

The language these people spoke was English — but it was not English. And this had nothing to do with the words the women heard not only on the streets but everywhere around them (tumbler for glass in the restaurant, basin for bowl in the lavatory) or saw posted in shop windows, print for calico, and cotton cloth for muslin, frock or gown for dress, and stays for corsets. In one of the shops Rebecca learned that a writing pad was called a block of paper here, and when she said — in all innocence and intending a compliment — “Such a fine store, it must be very old indeed,” the proprietor promptly said, “It’s not a store at all, it’s a shop, miss. I call a store a place for the sale of a miscellaneous lot of goods. This is a shop, miss!”

But more than that, more than the words that fell like Greek upon their American ears, there was the curious lilt and tone of the speech. Lizzie would later hear Alison define British as opposed to American English in terms of colors. “American English is yellow,” she said. “British English is brown.” And surely the British voice did seem pitched somewhat lower than the American. Moreover the average Englishman seemed to speak in a monotone until he reached the end of a sentence, at which point the voice rose to a higher note. It was Rebecca who commented (and she was a skillful pianist) that Englishwomen sounded as if they were speaking liquid music.

All was new and strange and fascinating in this bustling cosmopolis where a livery stable was adorned with a sign that read Job and Fly Master, or where men’s clothing stores were distinguished by signs such as Hosier and Glover or Outfitters. Even the bakery windows, brimming with dishes of cakes and pastries, displayed tiny little cards identifying each exotic delicacy, the words alien to their eyes: Banbury Buns and Eccles Cakes, Sally Lunns and Scones. The confectionary stores carried items with names like Rocks and Jujubes and Voice Lozenges, and dozens more that were unfamiliar to the women. All of London seemed an exotic bazaar brimming with merchandise of the queerest sort: coats of arms and heraldic devices, cast-off jewelry, stones taken from fob seals and rings, secondhand books, tarnished silver, hand-me-down clothes. In a drugstore, where Rebecca had thought to buy a draught of iron and quinine to bolster her flagging energy, the druggist (chemist, as he was called here) said, “Oh, we can’t give you that without a prescription, you know.”

“We can buy it in America without one,” Lizzie said.

“Aye, perhaps, ma’am,” the druggist said. “But not here.”

“Well,” Lizzie said, “can you give my friend an ounce of tincture of iron?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And a pair of two-grain quinine pills?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And could you lend her a glass — a tumbler, that is — with a little water in it?”

“Why, yes, ma’am,” the druggist said, looking extremely puzzled. When he brought the requested items to the counter, Lizzie added a dozen drops of iron to the water, and then held out the two quinine pellets to Rebecca, who swallowed them in a wink. The druggist was amazed.

“Now that is what I call clever,” he said. “Very clever indeed.”

She learned from Alison later on that whereas the man might indeed have been amazed by Lizzie’s American ingenuity, he would have been even more confounded by the American penchant for patent medicines and the ease with which they were purchased in the United States. An English chemist — although he might offer for sale such items as face powder (which the fashionable London ladies were not wearing that year) or cologne and soap and toothbrushes — was almost exclusively in the business of putting up prescriptions, and was unfamiliar with a clientele who might walk in off the street to ask for a little aromatic spirits of ammonia after a reckless night of libation, or acid phosphate to counteract the aftereffects of nicotine or a glass (or a tumbler, or whatever one chose to call it) of Calisaya tonic. So whereas his refusal to honor Rebecca’s request had seemed decidedly odd to the ladies, it was no odder to him than had been the request itself.

But Lizzie learned this only later, and for the moment it all seemed bewildering and strange and marvelously exciting, and she was as much exhausted by her own tumultuous reactions to this new world (imagine them calling America the New World!) as she was by the physical exertion of exploring it. When at last they made their way home — how odd that they already considered it “home” — to the Albemarle, she slipped out of her dress, corset and shoes, and lay down on the bed instantly, wearing only her underclothing and stockings, hoping for a short rejuvenating nap before the hush of evening descended upon this stimulating city. She was just beginning to doze — Rebecca was already asleep in the other bed — when the telephone rang, startling her out of her wits. There were telephones back in Fall River, of course, but certainly none in the Borden household, and none of them were quite like this one on the bedside table, with its short urgent ring sounding more like a warning than a summons. She groped for the instrument in the near gloom — Rebecca had drawn the curtains before they’d retired — brought the receiver to her ear, and mumbled, “Hello?”

“Miss Borden, this is the hall porter,” a male voice said. “Will you accept a telephone call from Mrs. Newbury?”

“Mrs. Newbury?” Lizzie said, puzzled for the moment. “Oh, yes. Put her through, please.”

She waited.

Alison’s voice came onto the line, deep and rich and liquidly musical. “My dear Lizzie,” she said, “I hope I’m not catching you at an awkward moment.”

“No, no,” Lizzie said. “Not at all.”

“I tried ringing you earlier, but I suppose you and your friends were out on the town. Have you been enjoying our dismal little city?”

“We love it,” Lizzie said.

“Ah, do you?” Alison said. “How nice. Is there anything at all we can do to help you get settled?”

“I can’t think of anything,” Lizzie said. “But it’s very kind of you to ask.”

“Well then, directly to the point,” Alison said. “We did so enjoy our conversation with you on the train yesterday. Albert and I,” she said. “And your friends, of course. Has Anna overcome her malaise? I do hope she has. We were wondering, Albert and I, if you might be free for tea this afternoon. I know it’s rather the last minute, isn’t it, but I promise I did try you earlier. We’re in Kensington, just near the Cromwell Road — how silly of me, you don’t know London, do you? But if you think you’re able to come, I’ll send my coachman round to collect you, say, at half-past four, a quarter to five. Albert should be home by then, and I know he’ll be happy to see you again; he so admires Americans. Do you think you might possibly come? With your friends, of course, if you choose.”

The “if you choose” made it sound, suddenly, as though Lizzie alone were being invited. She considered the propriety of abandoning her friends, wondered how long she was expected to stay for tea, wondered, too, if she could catch up with the others later for their evening meal. Rebecca had said something about asking the concierge (she was still unaccustomed to the term hall porter) to book some tickets for the D’Oyly Carte, which was performing The Gondoliers at the Savoy Theatre. Had Rebecca meant for tonight? If so, was there indeed time for tea and then supper before going to the theater?

“Lizzie? Are you there?”

“Yes, I am,” Lizzie said.

“Have I quite overwhelmed you, my dear? I know I must sound rash and impulsive — but then again, Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings.”

The “Kate” confused Lizzie until she realized that Alison was quoting from one of the Shakespeare plays, though she couldn’t exactly pinpoint which one. She thought to awaken Rebecca, who was sleeping peacefully in the other bed, a smile on her face, to ask whether she would care to accompany her to tea at the Newburys — the prospect of going there alone frankly frightened her.

“I’m afraid I’ve made a dreadful mistake, haven’t I?” Alison said. “Forgive me, do. And, Lizzie, if you should need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask. I was quite sincere about my earlier...”

“I’d be delighted to come to tea,” Lizzie said.