The Silk Weaver

There are many little civilities which a true gentleman will offer to a lady travelling alone, which she may accept with perfect propriety; but, while careful to thank him courteously, avoid any advance toward acquaintanceship.

– The Lady’s Book of Manners, 1760

The carriage pulled to a sudden halt, and for a moment Anna dared to imagine that they had arrived.

But something was wrong. In the distance could be heard a great deal of commotion: deep-voiced male shouts and the screech of women’s voices. They could see nothing from the windows and no one came to open the door. The four travelling companions sat without speaking, trying not to catch each other’s eyes. Only the silent sighs of irritation and tiny tics – the tapping of toes, the drumming of fingers – suggested that this delay was out of the ordinary.

After a few minutes the gentleman of the middling sort cleared his throat impatiently, took his cane and knocked briskly on the ceiling of the carriage – rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. There was no response. He leaned out and hollered upwards.

They waited a few moments longer, until the gentleman huffed and sighed again, stood up and let himself out of the coach, telling his son to stay with the ladies. Anna heard him exchange words with the coachman, and five further minutes passed. When he climbed back inside, his cheeks were so flushed she feared he might be about to suffer a choleric turn.

‘Nothing to worry about, ladies.’ His tone was falsely calm. ‘May I suggest, however, that you pull down the blinds.’

The carriage began to jerk backwards, forwards and sideways with such violent movements that the four of them were thrown about like butter in a churn. It seemed that the coachman was attempting the almost impossible task of turning around a coach and four on this narrow highway.

The shouting outside became louder. It was hard to make out any words, but at times it took on the rhythm of a chant, angry and menacing. What sounded like stones seemed to clatter on the cobbles around them and, even more alarmingly, against the carriage itself. One of the horses whinnied sharply as if in pain. The hollering came closer now, and Anna could make out a single syllable repeated again and again. It was shocking how such a plain, everyday word could sound so very threatening in the voice of an enraged crowd.

The coachman was hollering too, urging the horses to push on, pull back, hold hard. Everyone inside the coach remained tensely silent as they tried to brace themselves against the jolts. Both gentlemen stared fixedly forwards; the lady turned her face downwards towards her lap, her eyes sealed tightly as if in prayer.

Although she too was trying to remain outwardly composed, Anna could hear her own heart hammering in her chest and her knuckles, clutching onto the strap above the window, shone white in the gloom of the interior. She began to wonder whether this sort of thing was a regular occurrence in the city; she had heard there were demonstrations and mobs that could become violent, but never thought for a moment that she might directly encounter one.

Finally the carriage set off again at a great lick, but with the blinds still drawn it was impossible to see in which direction they were now travelling. ‘My dear sir, please tell us what was happening,’ the lady said, looking up at last, her breathing ragged. ‘Do I understand that our coach was the object of the commotion?’

‘Have no fear, my dear lady,’ the gentleman said smoothly. ‘We were in no danger. There was an obstruction in the road. The coachman has decided to try another route into the city.’ The colour of his face had returned to normal, but Anna didn’t believe a word.

‘But why would they be shouting about bread?’ she ventured. ‘And why would they choose strangers as the focus of such an attack?’

‘It is not for us to presume.’ He pursed his lips and would not be drawn further, so the four lapsed into another heavy silence.

Now, she began to worry about their delayed arrival. Cousin William was due to meet her at the Red Lyon public house, but how could she get word to him that they were well over an hour late? She had eaten nothing but a slice of bread and a small lump of cheese since breakfast and her stomach was rumbling so loudly that she feared that her companions would hear it, even over the clatter of wheels on the cobbled street.

At last the coach pulled to a halt and she heard the shout, ‘Spitalfields Red Lyon, Miss Butterfield.’

She climbed stiffly from the carriage and waited while her luggage was unloaded from the rear and placed beside her. In just seconds, the coachman shouted a cheery farewell and they were gone. The carriage and its passengers had become a haven of safety and protection and as she watched it turn the corner and disappear from view she felt abandoned and a little afraid. She was on her own in this great city.

Around Anna and her cases flowed a seemingly unending stream of people. Some walked at a leisurely pace in twos and threes, absorbed in conversation, while others, apparently engaged on urgent errands, scurried quickly, dodging between the groups.

She found herself entranced by the cries of the street pedlars. A woman waved a bunch of sweet-smelling herbs in front of people’s noses, shouting, ‘Buy my rosemary! Buy my sweetbriar! A farthing a bunch to sweeten your home.’ Some cries even sounded like poetry: ‘Pears for pies! Come feast your eyes! Ripe pears, of every size, who’ll buy?’

In her village, people would stop to gossip with travelling salesmen – it was one of the best ways of discovering what was going on in neighbouring villages, who had died, who had married, who had borne children and how the hay, corn and fruit harvests were faring. But here in the city it appeared that everyone was too busy to chat.

Every kind of produce seemed to be for sale: boxes and baskets, brushes and brooms, Morocco slippers, matches, saucepans, wooden spoons and nutmeg graters, doormats, chickweed and groundsel for bird seed, oysters, herring, ropes of onions, strawberries, rhubarb and all manner of other fruit and vegetables and, most enticing of all, delicious-smelling hot loaves, baked potatoes and meat pies that made her stomach rumble all the more.

Apart from the traders and a few beggars, no one was taking the slightest notice of her. A lone woman waiting on the roadside in the country would have received several offers of help within a few moments. Here, it was as if she were invisible, or something inanimate like a statue or an island around which the human river was forced to navigate. Among this mass of people her presence was of no consequence at all. I could disappear, she thought, and no one would ever be the wiser. It was a curious feeling, both frightening and freeing all at once.

And the noise! The clatter of drays and carriages across the cobbles, the shouts of hawkers and women hollering at their children. In the hubbub it took a little while to make sense of any words, and now Anna began to realise why: much of it was not in English.

She looked around. Across the road, although it was not yet dusk, a crowd of drinkers had gathered at the Red Lyon Inn, spilling into the street, tankards in hand, engaged in conversations animated with much raucous laughter.

Behind her, high brick arches fronted the pavement and, through them, she could see a cavernous interior dense with tables and other wooden structures. It looked like a market, but Anna had never seen such an expanse of stalls. Just two dozen filled the square at Halesworth, even at Michaelmas, yet there looked to be well over one hundred here. Although trading had ended for the day and the stalls were now empty, pungent smells of herbs and vegetables, stale fish and rotting meat wafted across the road.

Minutes ticked by on the cracked-faced clock above the market. Her stays were tight, her stomach empty, she had a raging thirst and she was beginning to feel light-headed. She shifted her weight from toe to heel and from foot to foot as she had learned during long hours at church, and prayed that William would come soon.

Time passed and she fell into a kind of reverie. The next thing she knew, she seemed to be on the ground, vaguely aware of someone kneeling by her side and cradling her head, with another person standing close on the other side, fanning her with his cap. It took her a few moments to understand where she was.

‘Oh dear, I am so sorry to be a nuisance,’ she mumbled, starting to push herself up.

‘Do not be troubled,’ the young man said. ‘We are keeping you safe.’ He spoke something unintelligible to his companion who disappeared, returning shortly with a cup of water which she sipped gratefully.

‘Are you having a home?’ the young man asked. ‘A family? Or a friend, perhaps?’

‘I am come to stay with my uncle, Joseph Sadler of Spital Square,’ she said, her wits now slowly returning, ‘and my cousin William was to meet me here.’ The young man spoke some further incomprehensible words to his friend, who left them again.

A glorious thought slipped into her confused mind: perhaps they were speaking in tongues, just as the Apostles described? She’d always considered it an unlikely story – just an allegory, like so many tales in the Bible – but something rather like it did indeed seem to be happening to her. She smiled to herself. The Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways.

A crowd had gathered now, but with this young man’s arms around her she felt curiously unafraid. She could see that he was clean-shaven and gentle of demeanour. His eyes were the deepest brown, like horse chestnuts freshly released from their cases. Although wigless and not, as far as she could see, dressed as a gentleman, his dark hair was neatly tied back, and he spoke to her tenderly and smiled often, to reassure her. There was a sweet, musty smell about him; not unpleasant but strange, nothing she could recognise.

The second boy returned, panting, ‘He come.’ Not wanting her cousin to find her on the ground, and since she was now feeling considerably recovered, Anna tried to stand. The two young men gently put their arms around her waist to help her up.

At that moment a loud shout came from the edge of the crowd. ‘Make way, make way. Let me by.’ As William appeared – for indeed it was he, a tall, thin-faced young man in a powdered wig – his face darkened.

‘How dare you? Take your hands off the young lady at once,’ he bellowed, and a fist whipped past Anna’s nose into the boy’s face. He grunted and fell away, nearly taking her with him but for the strong left hand of William holding her arm painfully tight. He aimed another punch at the second boy, who fell in an untidy heap at their feet. The crowd gasped and drew back.

‘Now get out of my sight, cabbage heads,’ William bawled, lashing out with his boots as the crowd tried to drag the boys to safety, ‘and if I ever catch you touching an English lady again, I’ll string you up by your webbed feet.’

‘Do not be so harsh, Cousin,’ Anna whispered, shocked by his violent response. ‘They were helping me. I had fainted from the heat.’

‘Dirty frogs,’ he growled, barking instructions about the baggage to a man with a pushcart. ‘You should never have allowed it. You have much to learn about how a young lady should comport herself in the city.’

‘Yes, I expect I do,’ Anna said, in what she hoped was a conciliatory tone. He grabbed her arm again and began to drag her along the road with such haste that she had to trot to keep up.

‘Hurry along, Anna Butterfield. We have been waiting for hours. I cannot imagine why you did not send word of your arrival earlier. Had you done so you would not have caused this trouble. You are most terribly late and supper has gone cold.’

Fortunately it was but a few minutes – at William’s pace – from the Red Lyon to Spital Square. They stopped outside a house with a wide shop frontage: bow windows either side of a grand front door set with bottle-glass, and double pillars that supported a porch to shelter callers from the rain. On a board hanging below the porch was written in elegant gold script: Joseph Sadler & Son, Mercers to the Gentry. They were here at last.

She turned to go up the steps, but William grabbed her arm once more and pulled her onwards, opening a smaller side door that led into the darkness of a long entrance hall. They passed two doors on the ground floor – probably leading into the shop area, she assumed – up some stairs to a wide landing, and through yet another door into the dining room.

Uncle Joseph stepped forward first, welcoming her with a formal handshake and a smile that disappeared as soon as it had arrived, as though it were an infrequent and unexpected visitor. He was a daunting figure: tall and portly, whiskered and bewigged even at home, high-collared and tail-coated, with a well-rounded stomach held tight under his embroidered silk waistcoat. He must once have been a handsome man but good living had taken its toll. His jowls drooped and wobbled like a turkey’s wattle.

‘Welcome, dear Niece,’ he said. ‘We hope you will be happy here.’ He waved his hand proprietorially around the sumptuously furnished room, in the centre of which a deeply polished oak table laden with silver glistened in the light of many candles.

Anna dipped her knee. ‘I am indebted to you, sir, for your generous hospitality,’ she said.

Aunt Sarah seemed a kindly sort with a smile that, unlike her husband’s, appeared quite accustomed to her face. She kissed Anna on both cheeks. ‘You poor thing, you look weary,’ she said, standing back to regard her up and down. ‘And your clothes . . .’ She gave a little sigh and her eyes turned away as if the sight of Anna’s dress was too terrible to contemplate, even though it was her Sunday best. ‘Never mind. You shall have supper now and a good rest after your long journey. Tomorrow we can see about your wardrobe.’

She has the same voice as my father, Anna thought, with the slight lisp that seemed to run in the family. She was his younger sister, after all, but it was difficult, without staring, to divine precisely which features they shared. The lips, perhaps, or the eyebrows? Certainly not the stature. Sarah was very much shorter and more rounded while her father was angular and long of limb, proportions which Anna had inherited and which, she knew, were no advantage for a woman. But the familiarity of her aunt’s features helped Anna feel at home.

‘Please do call me Lizzie, Cousin Anna. I am so looking forward to having an elder sister.’ On her lips the lisp sounded sweet, even endearing. ‘A brother is no use at all,’ she added, with a poisonous glance across the table. William returned a scowl which, in truth, did not seem to have left his face since their first encounter.

Lizzie would be around fourteen years of age, Anna calculated. A pretty little thing, she observed, round-faced like her mother but much slighter, all auburn ringlets and cream lace, six years younger than her brother and four years younger than herself. Sarah had borne several other children, she remembered, but these were the only two who had survived. She recalled her father sighing over his sister’s letters: ‘Another child gone into the arms of our Lord. Alas, poor Sarah. If only they could live somewhere with healthier air.’ In church, he would name Sarah’s lost babies out loud, beseeching God to care for them in heaven.

Anna understood from this litany of sadness that childbirth was something to be dreaded, perhaps more than anything else in the world. Yet how could it be avoided, she wondered, when one grew into a woman and became settled in the proper manner?

They sat down and Joseph poured goblets of a liquid the colour of ripe plums. ‘Claret’, he called it. As her uncle raised his glass with a toast ‘to the arrival of our dear cousin, Anna’, she took a tentative sip; it was sharper than communion wine but tasted delicious. She ventured another and yet another until she found herself becoming quite warm and relaxed.

‘You poor things, I cannot imagine the trials you have been through these past few months,’ Aunt Sarah said, handing around a plateful of cold meats. ‘I do hope that dear Fanny’s last few weeks were not too difficult?’

The warm glow disappeared as a vision of her mother appeared in Anna’s mind: ghostly pale and skeletal, propped against the pillows and struggling to contain paroxysms of coughing, gasping for every breath and unable to speak or eat for the congestion in her chest.

It had been a long and lingering illness: a slow decline followed by apparent recovery, bringing new hope, only to be dashed by further decline. Throughout it all, Anna and her sister Jane had nursed their mother, trying as best they could to shield their father who, as the village vicar, had plenty of problems of his own: difficult parishioners, the demands of his diocesan masters and the need to shore up the ruinous fabric of the church.

The exhaustion of caring for her mother and running the household had kept Anna from dwelling too much on the tragedy ahead. When it finally came, Jane took to her bed and wept, so it seemed, for several weeks. Nothing could console her except for the sweetmeats she consumed by day and the warmth of her sister’s embrace in their shared bed by night.

Their father, Theodore, though hollowed-out and grey in countenance, continued about his daily work, the only difference being that he retired earlier to bed than usual. Once or twice, in the dead of night, Anna would hear heartrending sobs through the wall and longed to comfort him. But she resisted the impulse, sensing that he must be allowed to embrace this misery without needing to keep face for anyone else.

As for herself, the anticipated collapse into despair never really happened. She rose each day, washed and dressed and did her chores, made meals for the family, organised the funeral tea and tried to smile when people commented on how well she was coping. But inside she felt empty, almost indifferent to her own misery. Grief was like sleepwalking through deep snow, its landscape endless and unchanging, every step painful and exhausting. The world seemed to become monochrome, colours lost their hue, sounds were muffled and distorted. It felt as though her own life had been taken, along with her mother’s.

Dragging herself away from these painful recollections, she turned back to the dining table, and her waiting aunt. ‘Thank you, madam, she was peaceful at the end.’ As she said it, she crossed her fingers in her lap. It was an old habit from childhood, when she believed it might save her from God’s wrath when lying. But then she uncrossed them as she realised that her words had a certain truth: the lifeless form laid out on the bed had indeed looked peaceful, now that all pain had gone.

‘His faith is a great comfort, as you can imagine,’ Anna ventured, although she knew well that the opposite was true: his faith had been sorely tested these past few months.

‘It is a cruel God, indeed, who takes with one hand while purporting to offer solace with the other,’ her uncle said.

‘It is an interesting conjecture, all the same.’ William’s eyes glittered, alert for the challenge, his thin lips in a sardonic twist. ‘Just what is the point of God, when all’s said and done?’

‘Shush, William,’ Sarah said, sliding a glance towards Lizzie and back again to her son. ‘Save such debates for your club fellows.’

A silence fell over the table. Anna took a couple of rather larger sips of claret. ‘I do hope you will forgive me for my tardy arrival. The coach was held up by a commotion, and we had to find another route into the city,’ she said.

‘I do not know exactly where, I am afraid. It was as we entered the city, and we could not see anything from the coach on account of having to draw down the blinds. There was much shouting – something about bread, I thought I could hear.’

‘Sounds like another food riot,’ William said. ‘Probably those Frenchie weavers again, like last month. They’re always revolting. Have you heard anything, Pa?’

Joseph shook his head, jaws working on the generous spoonful of meat and potato he had just stuffed into his mouth. ‘If they didn’t waste so much money on Geneva, they would have plenty for bread,’ he muttered. ‘And it would help if those Strangers would stop stirring things up.’

William took out his watch, put down his knife and spoon with a hurried clatter and pushed back his chair. ‘Forgive me, I am late for the club,’ he said, grabbing his jacket and bowing slightly in Anna’s direction. ‘We will meet again tomorrow, dear Coz. In the meantime do try to stay away from cabbages. They can cause the most odorous indigestion.’

Anna puzzled over this until, later, she recalled his ‘cabbage heads’ jibe. Why he should be so vitriolic towards two innocent and indeed most helpful young men was a mystery, but so much of this new world was unfathomable that it made her feel quite dizzy to contemplate.

After the meal Lizzie was deputed to show her the rest of the house – the upper floors at least, for the ground floor was entirely devoted to Uncle’s business and the basement, she presumed, was the domain of the servants. The building stood four storeys tall and, although deep from front to back, it felt less spacious than her own dear vicarage and nothing like so homely. She admired the opulent silk hangings, the elegant furniture, the painted wainscoting in each of the main rooms and the shutters on every window, but the overall effect was to make the place darker and more formal.

Next to the dining room, at the front of the house above what she presumed to be the shopfront, was a wide, elegant drawing room with a cast-iron fireplace and marble surround. Out of the window, Anna could see the street and the small square of grass with a few young trees which, she thought to herself, no doubt afforded the house its grand address. And yet the building was attached on either side to others so that it was difficult to see where one started and the other ended. Land must be very scarce in this cramped city, she thought to herself, that even in such prosperous areas they cannot afford to be separated from their neighbours by even a few feet.

‘It’s just a patch of mouldy grass and a tree,’ Lizzie replied quickly. ‘I can show you tomorrow.’

‘There is little to inspire an artist,’ Lizzie said. ‘Although I know where we could see flowers and fruits in great abundance.’

‘At the market. All sorts, from farms and Strangers’ gardens and from foreign countries too, piled high in their thousands. It is a wonderful sight.’ Lizzie laughed suddenly. ‘I do not suppose that is what you had in mind for a painting?’

‘Not really,’ Anna said, pleased to be talking of lighter matters after so many serious hours. ‘Although I should love to see it.’

‘Mama will not let us enter the market; she says it is common. “’Twould not be decorous for a young lady.”’ Lizzie mimicked her mother’s tone, crinkling her pretty features into a grimace. ‘I think that’s silly, don’t you? But I shall ask if we can visit our new church tomorrow, so we can pass by.’

Anna demurred. It would be unwise to appear disloyal to her aunt at such an early stage. ‘I could turn my pen to architectural scenes instead, but I do find the perspective of buildings such a puzzle, don’t you?’

Lizzie’s face fell, her smiles gone as quickly as they arrived. ‘I would love to be able to draw, but my tutor is so scornful of my attempts that I scarcely dare to try.’

‘Oh yes,’ Lizzie said, instantly recovered. ‘I should like that very much.’

‘Of course, you must be exhausted,’ her aunt said. ‘But I must warn you that your chamber is up many stairs, and it is rather plain. We are short of rooms because the ground floor is given over to the business. We hope to move shortly, to an address more suited to Sadler and Son’s status, do we not, my dearest?’ She smiled at her husband but his face remained impassive. ‘Lizzie, why don’t you show Anna to her room? Her luggage is already there and I shall send the maid at once with water.’

They climbed a narrow wooden stairway to the very top floor, which Lizzie called the ‘old weaving loft’. It had been converted, she said, now that Uncle Joseph had finished with the weaving and turned to selling finished silks for his living. The room, next door to one shared by the cook and Betty the maid, was indeed small and plain, with a wooden chest of drawers, a side table with a bowl and ewer, an upright chair and a bed that, although simple, looked marvellously inviting to her weary limbs.

After Lizzie had clattered back down the stairs, Anna opened the casement, took a long breath of warm night air and sighed deeply, releasing the muscles of her face that had grown painful from holding a polite smile.

The bed was short, the horsehair mattress lumpy and the blanket smelled unaired. But if not as comfortable as her feather bed at home, she was at least warm and safe. What more could she want for?

It was certainly warm in this attic on a hot July evening. Little breeze stirred the air, even up here on the top floor. The noise from the street was astonishing – did people in the city never rest? It seemed hardly to have abated since she first stepped from the coach this afternoon: brays of laughter from boisterous gangs of young men, the shrill calls of women and wails of children, the howling of dogs and keening of cats, the clanging of coaches and the hammering of handcart wheels on the cobbles. In her village all would be quiet at this time of night except for the rhythmical boom of the breakers when the wind was in the east.

What an adventure it had been. Despite the sorrow of leaving and the heaviness in her heart which had not lifted since her mother’s death, she could not help being a little excited.

‘Life has much to offer a talented young woman such as you,’ her father had said as they sat together that last evening. ‘There is so much to see and so much to learn, much in the world to savour and enjoy. But you will not find it here in this little community. You must go and seek your fortune in the city.’

‘Indeed,’ he laughed. ‘And if you become Mayor of London, then you must invite us to your grand residence. But remember you can come home whenever your black cat leads you here.’

Even though the first day on the road had been perfectly straightforward and without incident, every small event came as a surprise for a novice traveller. She had been instructed to refrain from conversing with the other passengers for fear of encouraging intimacy, but it was so rare to spend time in the company of strangers that she could not prevent herself from scrutinising them, as covertly as possible to avoid appearing rude.

All ages of human life seemed to be represented in the cramped space of the stagecoach. Next to her on the bench was a stout gentleman who studied his newspaper in a self-important kind of way, harrumphing with disapproval at what he read and digging her in the ribs whenever he turned the page. After a while he fell asleep, tipping alarmingly sideways onto her shoulder before stirring and sharply pulling himself upright, only to repeat the process every few minutes.

She could not see the faces of the two women on his other side but knew they must be herring girls from Yarmouth, unmistakeable from their odour and redness of hand. On the opposite bench, two stout housewives from Bungay occupied sufficient space for three and chattered unceasingly all the way to Ipswich. Each jiggled a small child on one knee and a baby on the other.

The children whined incessantly before falling asleep with dribbles of snot streaming unchecked from their noses, while the chubby cupids took it in turns to cry: piercing, disturbing sounds in such close proximity. In between wails these babes would bestow cherubic smiles upon any who caught their eye, and all would be forgiven until the next bout of yowling. When it went on for too long, their mothers would yank down their tops and stuff the wailing infants’ faces into the exposed folds of disconcertingly white flesh.

A withered elderly gentleman had levered himself into the narrow space next to the two ladies and, when he too fell asleep, Anna feared that he might be silently squeezed to death, with no one the wiser until all had disembarked.

To reserve her stares and pass the time, she took out the pocket Bible her father had pressed into her hand at their parting. Her faith had evaporated during the long nights of her mother’s agony, and had never returned, but the familiar phrases of the epistles were comforting. As she opened the scuffed leather cover she saw for the first time that he had inscribed inside the frontispiece, in his vicar’s spidery hand: To my dearest Anna, God keep you and hold you. Tears prickled behind her eyelids. When will I see the dear man again? she thought. How will he cope, with just Jane to care for him?

Although she was only five at the time and had witnessed little of her mother’s labour, she understood that her sister’s birth had been long and arduous. When she finally arrived, the baby was blue and limp. Defying all expectations, her sister survived and slowly gained strength and weight. It was not until much later they discovered that the difficult birth had left long-lasting effects: Jane’s right side was weak and she walked with a limp, dragging her foot painfully behind her. And although sweet-natured, she was slow in her mind, struggling to understand those things that others found simple, and never managing to learn reading and writing.

How will she manage the household without me, strange little creature that she is? Anna thought to herself. Will she understand Father’s needs? Will she stay well? And will she find company and friendship with other girls in the village, now that I have gone? How she missed them both, already.

When they finally reached the staging inn at Chelmsford, the portly gentleman took her hand to help her disembark.

‘Thank you very much,’ she replied, grateful that someone had taken even a slight notice of her. ‘This is this one. I suppose the portmanteau and hatbox will stay on the coach for the onward journey in the morning?’

He picked up her shabby canvas bag and his smart leather case and walked with her across the yard towards the front door of the inn. ‘Pardon me, madam,’ he said, ‘please do not think I am too forward if I offer a nugget of advice?’

‘Dear sir, any advice is most welcome, for I am unfamiliar with the customs of the road,’ she said.

‘Then may I recommend that you might ask for your meal to be served in your room? The tap can become somewhat rowdy and may not suit your gentle temperament.’ As if to prove his words, a roar of voices accosted them as he pushed open the door. She hesitated on the threshold but he took her arm and gently led her between the crowded tables through a fog of tobacco smoke towards a serving hatch. He shouted over the hubbub to a surly-looking woman Anna assumed to be the innkeeper’s wife and, shortly afterwards, a scruffy boy appeared and showed them upstairs. As they parted on the landing, Anna said, ‘You have been most kind, sir.’

The little exchange had so cheered her that she barely noticed how small and sparsely furnished was the room, how grey the bedsheets from too many launderings. When it arrived, the cold mutton was greasy and the potatoes pocked with black eyes, but she was so hungry she cleaned the plate without a thought. The candle stump they supplied quickly burned out and she found herself facing a long, disturbed night, trying to ignore the bedbugs as they celebrated the arrival of new flesh, and listening to the tap room below becoming ever more lively.

When she slept, finally, she dreamed of returning home to find all unchanged, the vicarage full of activity and laughter as it once had been, the fires lit, the family foursome intact. She fell into her mother’s embrace, smelling the mingled aromas of laundry soap and garden herbs that, to Anna, spelled love and security.

When she woke in the early hours and realised where she was the tears came at last, wetting her pillow with long, racking sobs that seemed to shake her whole body. How could she think of leaving that beloved place? But how could she return to it, when she would never again feel her mother’s warmth?

Yet next morning her mood seemed to rise with the sun. She was sorry to discover that the kindly gentleman was not joining them again, but stepped aboard the coach full of optimism at the prospect of another day of travel, even venturing a smile at the only other passenger, a smartly dressed lady. After twenty-four hours of barely speaking to another person she would have welcomed a conversation, and was disappointed when the lady immediately took out her spectacles and opened her book.

She turned to her own thoughts, excited at the prospect of seeing at first hand all that she had heard about the great metropolis, and of making the acquaintance of her uncle and aunt, and her two cousins. After being confined to the house caring for her mother for such long, dutiful months she yearned to spread her wings and see the big city, and they had generously offered her this opportunity.

In the early afternoon, they stopped at a village to pick up two gentlemen who appeared to be father and son, and the coachman invited the ladies to disembark for what he called ‘a fine view of the city’.

At first, Anna could make out only the River Thames, reflecting the sun like a silver snake along the valley beneath a reddish-brown pall of smoke. As her eyes adjusted to the distance, she could discern ribbons reaching out towards them and in every other direction. After a few moments she came to realise, with astonishment, that these were streets of houses, in their hundreds, even thousands. The numbers of people all these buildings might contain was barely imaginable. In the densest part of the city before them, along the river’s edge, barely a speck of green could be seen; not a tree, not a field in sight.

How will I ever survive in such close proximity to so many others, all breathing that smoke-filled air? she wondered. Her village had but three hundred souls, with fields and woods occupying all the land to one side, sand dunes and the great empty sea to the other. What will I find to paint, in a place with no flowers or trees, no butterflies or birds?

Turning restlessly in the attic bed, she felt empty and emotionless, as though travelling at such an unaccustomed pace had caused a part of her soul to be left behind. She had waited so long for her ‘big adventure’ to start. But now that she was actually here, everything seemed so strange and unfamiliar, even frightening, that she longed to be back in the comfortable familiarity of the countryside.