Pages from a Journal with Other Papers

by William Hale White

Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.

MRS. FAIRFAX

The town of Langborough in 1839 had not been much disturbed since the beginning of the preceding century. The new houses were nearly all of them built to replace others which had fallen into decay; there were no drains; the drinking-water came from pumps; the low fever killed thirty or forty people every autumn; the Moot Hall still stood in the middle of the High Street; the newspaper came but once a week; nobody read any books; and the Saturday market and the annual fair were the only events in public local history. Langborough, being seventy miles from London and eight from the main coach-road, had but little communication with the outside world. Its inhabitants intermarried without crossing from other stocks, and men determined their choice mainly by equality of fortune and rank. The shape of the nose and lips and colour of the eyes may have had some influence in masculine selection, but not much: the doctor took the lawyer’s daughter, the draper took the grocer’s, and the carpenter took the blacksmith’s. Husbands and wives, as a rule, lived comfortably with one another; there was no reason why they should quarrel. The air of the place was sleepy; the men attended to their business, and the women were entirely apart, minding their household affairs and taking tea with one another. In Langborough, dozing as it had dozed since the days of Queen Anne, it was almost impossible that any woman should differ so much from another that she could be the cause of passionate preference.

One day in the spring of 1839 Langborough was stirred to its depths. No such excitement had been felt in the town since the run upon the bank in 1825, when one of the partners went up to London, brought down ten thousand pounds in gold with him by the mail, and was met at Thaxton cross-roads by a post-chaise, which was guarded into Langborough by three men with pistols. A circular printed in London was received on that spring day in 1839 by all the respectable ladies in the town stating that a Mrs. Fairfax was about to begin business in Ferry Street as a dressmaker. She had taken the only house to be let in Ferry Street. It was a cottage with a front and back sitting-room, and belonged to an old lady in Lincoln, who inherited it from her brother, who once lived in it but had been dead forty years. Before a week had gone by four-fifths of the population of Langborough had re-inspected it. The front room was the shop, and in the window was a lay-figure attired in an evening robe of rose-coloured silk, the like of which for style and fit no native lady had ever seen. Underneath it was a card—“Mrs. Fairfax, Milliner and Dressmaker.” The circular stated that Mrs. Fairfax could provide materials or would make up those brought to her by her customers.

Great was the debate which followed this unexpected apparition. Who Mrs. Fairfax was could not be discovered. Her furniture and the lay-figure had come by the waggon, and the only information the driver could give was that he was directed at the “George and Blue Boar” in Holborn to fetch them from Great Ormond Street. After much discussion it was agreed that Mrs. Bingham, the wife of the wine merchant, should call on Mrs. Fairfax and inquire the price of a gown. Mrs. Bingham was at the head of society in Langborough, and had the reputation of being very clever. It was hoped, and indeed fully expected, that she would be able to penetrate the mystery. She went, opened the door, a little bell sounded, and Mrs. Fairfax presented herself. Mrs. Bingham’s eyes fell at once upon Mrs. Fairfax’s dress. It was black, with no ornament, and constructed with an accuracy and grace which proved at once to Mrs. Bingham that its maker was mistress of her art. Mrs. Bingham, although she could not entirely desert the linendraper’s wife, whose husband was a good customer for brandy, had some of her clothes made in London when she stayed with her sister in town, and, to use her own phrase, “knew what was what.”

“Mrs. Fairfax?”

A bow.

“Will you please tell me what a gown would cost made somewhat like that in the window?”

“For yourself, madam?”

“Yes.”