Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [171]
‘Look!’ Mary interrupted him as he was talking about a coffee house where he used to meet Dr Johnson. She pointed at a woman pushing what could only be called a baby carriage, for a small child was sitting inside the splendid large-wheeled vehicle, waving its little hands in excitement. Mary had never seen anything like it before. ‘Are folk so rich here in London they wheel their children around?’
Boswell chuckled. He thought it was so like a woman to be more interested in a child in a wheeled conveyance than hearing about his great friend. He supposed, too, that when a person couldn’t read or write, they wouldn’t understand why anyone would bother to write a dictionary, or even need to use one.
‘I see nursemaids wheeling their charges around the London parks so often that I don’t find the carriages remarkable,’ he said. ‘But I suspect it’s not only the cost of them which deters most mothers, they are a little unwieldy.’
‘But it’s a good idea,’ Mary said. ‘Especially if you had two or three little ones.’
‘I daresay ordinary women with several children would like water coming into their houses in pipes, even more than baby carriages,’ he said. ‘That would save so much drudgery for them. Some of the rich people have rooms just for bathing in, and the dirty water is disposed of easily by opening a sluice.’
Mary looked at him in disbelief. ‘They do?’
‘Oh yes,’ Boswell said. ‘Whole terraces of houses have been built with water brought in by elm pipes, and drains to take away the waste. Maybe one day when these conveniences spread throughout the city our streets will be pleasanter places to walk.’
Mary began to laugh, for just ahead of them she saw a maid tipping the contents of a pail out of a second-storey window.
‘I’ve been unlucky enough to be drenched that way dozens of times,’ Boswell said ruefully. ‘I think proper drains are something that the government ought to see as a priority.’
‘I didn’t think London would smell as bad as Plymouth,’ Mary said, wrinkling her nose. ‘But it does.’
‘What can we expect with all these horses?’ Boswell remarked, waving his hand to indicate at least thirty of them within their view. ‘On a wet day the cart and carriage wheels splash their muck up all over you. They have tried to stop cattle being driven through the city, but to no avail.’
‘At least London people seem to be mainly plump and well,’ Mary said.
Boswell sighed. ‘This is a respectable part of the city,’ he said. ‘There are other parts like St Giles which tell a very different story. But I’m not going to show you poverty and squalor, you’ve had quite enough exposure to that.’
The lodgings Boswell took Mary to in Little Titchfield Street were in a narrow but tall house in a terrace, with a gleaming brass knocker on the door and the whitest steps Mary had ever seen. She had a moment’s panic as Boswell paid off the driver, for surely he didn’t think someone like her should stay in such a place?
But the apple-cheeked woman with a lace-trimmed cap who opened the door and was introduced by Boswell as Mrs Wilkes didn’t seem shocked or surprised by Mary’s appearance.
‘Come in, my dear,’ she said. ‘Mr Boswell has told me all about you, and I’m sure we’ll get along famously.’
Without stopping to draw breath, she commented on the fine weather, and told Mary that she provided breakfast and supper, was happy to do her laundry, and that she must think of her rooms here as home.
‘I have water heating for your bath,’ she went on, though dropping her voice as if this was a delicate matter. ‘Mr Boswell said that would be what you wanted. I only ask that you carry it up yourself because the stairs are too much for me.’
Mary could do no more than nod, for the closest she’d ever come to such startling comfort and splendour was peering through windows of the grander houses in Plymouth. From the narrow hall with its polished