FIVE
1768, London
The petals were studded with tiny beads that, when looked upon closely, reflected a world turned upside down as if by a conjurer’s trick. Mary-Louise Stephenson sat at a table by the window in her drawing room and adjusted the flowers in the vase in front of her, loosening the tight knot she had wound them into when she gathered them and being especially careful not to break the remaining dewdrops.
Earlier that morning she had offered to go to the market, walking the few short streets from the house in Spital Yard in search of a turnip and some carrots, and on the way home she had picked these wildflowers, for they grew in tangled profusion in the ditches thereabouts. She favoured them above all others, which was just as well, for the household’s meagre income rarely stretched to the purchase of meat, let alone the flower-seller’s luscious roses, blousy peonies and the lilies that almost made her swoon with their perfume as she passed. Later, her sister Frances would add a handful of grain and some water to the vegetables that she had left in the kitchen, making a soup for their supper to have with a loaf of yesterday’s bread. With care, they would stretch this meal until the end of the week.
Ignoring the knot of hunger in her stomach, Mary turned the flowers this way and that, searching for the best angle of the sunny yellow coltsfoot and the purple flowers of wild violet. She had in mind to design a pattern from their contrasting forms and complementary hues. She worked by painting the flower first and then tracing a pattern from which to embroider a repeat of the flower onto fabric. Her ability with the needle was not of sufficient quality for her to imagine seeking employment in that area, nor were the wages – sevenpence for a day that often began at dawn and did not end until late at night – something to aspire towards. But it enabled her to demonstrate how the design might work when woven in silk. At least that was what she hoped.
It was her sister Frances who had suggested Mary turn her fondness for painting into a more profitable pursuit. They lived on the edges of the city’s weaving industry, on the outermost of a grid of streets barely a half-mile square, where almost every dwelling housed a loom on its upper floors, presided over by a journeyman or master weaver, and the air sang with their clack and clatter from sunup to sundown and beyond. Silks and damasks were woven and brocaded with showy patterns of flowers, exotic fruits and leaves. There was lustred taffety, corded paduasoy, silk tabby, damask and velvet; the most expensive silks were shot through with fine gold or silver thread. Patterned silk commanded a price more than double that of its plain cousins, for it required far greater skill to weave.
‘A few extra shillings in the household purse would indeed be a blessing,’ Frances had said. ‘For I do not know how we will afford the rent after this year.’ She insisted that Mary was as talented as any of the men. ‘More skilled too, once you learn the particulars, I’ll wager. It should be but a short step from painting and embroidery.’
Fabric design, like so many interesting – and better-paid – activities it seemed to Mary, was generally the province of men, and the pattern-drawers, mercers and silk weavers behaved like proprietary lovers, not allowing outsiders to come within sniffing distance of their work. There had been but one female pattern-drawer in recent decades – the revered Anna Maria Garthwaite – but she had been buried five years past now. Mary dreamed of one day taking her place, wished she were still alive to share her wisdom.
The sisters were fortunate in that Frances’s late husband, Samuel, had been a journeyman weaver, and they had friends among the legion who plied their trade in the surrounding streets. Frances had appealed to the good graces of one of them, Guy Le Maître, a Huguenot whose father had fled persecution in Lyon, to initiate them into the mysteries of weaving. One morning, he led them up into his loft, a sloping space filled with light that streamed in from long windows set into the angled walls. There he demonstrated the workings of the lashes and battens, the needles where they sat on guiding springs, and how the weft and warp threads were set up, using the pattern on the squared paper before him as a template. ‘We have a flying shuttle,’ he said, his expression serious as he pointed in the direction of a draw boy who sat atop the loom sending a small object on a wheeled track hurtling across the silk threads. ‘Now we can weave fabric wider than the span of a man’s arm. It is a great saving.’
Mary nodded, intoxicated by the dry, earthy smell of the skeins of silk thread and the lightning-fast movement of the shuttle. ‘Why, it is as fine embroidery, not weaving,’ she said, drawing as close to the loom as she dared. ‘How is that possible?’
‘The detail,’ he said. ‘The most intricate patterns can take weeks to mount.’
Mary’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
‘To set up,’ he explained. ‘This particular design is such that we can see enough of a repeat of the pattern whether used on a waistcoat or the skirts of a ball gown.’
A glimmer of understanding lit Mary’s mind as she marvelled at the rich colours of the silk thread wound on the bobbins that lined the room: buttercup yellow, the crimson of rosehips, peach, bright scarlet, and a purple–blue almost the exact hue of iris petals.
‘The more detailed the pattern, the more lifelike it is, but also the more difficult to weave without making an error, dropping a thread. We must strike a balance,’ he said. ‘The pattern-drawer ought not to be a stranger to geometry nor proportion, as well as art,’ he added.
‘And how much of this fabric will you weave?’ she asked, though Frances, who stood nearby but said nothing, had already explained some of the workings of the trade. Mary had determined to appeal to Monsieur Le Maître’s sense of importance, to flatter his ego so that he might be forthcoming.
‘Generally only enough for four gowns, as much as the mercer has requested and knows he will sell. Each gown will use between nine and sixteen yards of material.’
‘So, between thirty and sixty-odd yards of one design in total,’ said Mary, calculating the sum in her head.
Guy’s eyes widened momentarily at her quick accuracy before his expression assumed its usual dour impassivity.
‘And how long will that take?’
‘Several months.’
‘I can see that a lady would not want to meet another wearing a gown of the same fabric,’ she murmured. ‘And why it commands such a high price.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Who chooses the colours? The weave? How exactly do you decide on a pattern?’
‘The weaver will sometimes commission a pattern-drawer; other times it is the mercer who decides what is to be woven. I have to admit, however,’ he grumbled, ‘that at times the pattern-drawer is unaware of the limitations of the loom and we have, on occasion, been forced to halt the weaving until it can be altered. Sometimes even scrap the entire commission.’
‘I can well imagine the cost in lost time and materials,’ Mary sympathised.
Guy nodded, seemingly unfazed by her endless questions. ‘The mercer provides us with the order, although we might make up a length of fabric in the hope of finding a buyer,’ he continued. ‘’Tis never good to have the loom lying idle.’