Vox Meditantis

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

Sunday, 13th November 1864

[She stands at the centre of the exercise yard. The November light falls grey through high windows. Her voice carries against stone walls.]

They tell me it is Sunday. The thirteenth of November, in this year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-four. The chaplain came through earlier – I heard his boots on the flags, heard him murmur to the wardress – but he did not stop at my door. Perhaps he thinks me past redemption. Or perhaps he simply forgot.

I do not much care for Sundays now.

[Pauses. Looks upward.]

This place – do you see how it is arranged? Like a theatre, very nearly. The galleries rising up, tier upon tier, and we poor creatures at the pit. Only we are both players and audience here, playing to empty houses, our voices thrown back at us by the stone. Echo upon echo. I spoke my name this morning – spoke it aloud, just to hear it – and it came back to me strange, as though it belonged to someone else entire.

There is a woman two cells down who sings. Hymns, mostly. Her voice carries thin through the walls, and by the time it reaches me it is scarce more than shadow. A ghost of sound. I am envious of her, if you must know. Envious that she has something left to sing about, some faith that has not been stripped from her like so much worn calico.

[Moves closer, lowering her voice.]

I was not always here. You must understand that. Three years since, I had a position – a respectable position – at the Surrey Theatre, south of the water. Not as an actress, mind. I was not so bold as that, though Lord knows I dreamt of it often enough. No, I kept the wardrobe. Mended the costumes, pressed the silks, minded the jewels – paste, most of them, but they caught the lamplight pretty enough. I knew every gown, every doublet, every ridiculous plumed hat in that building. Knew them better than I knew my own face.

The theatre is like a dream, you see. A fever-dream where everything glitters and nothing is quite real. You put on another’s face, another’s voice, and for two hours you are transformed. The pit roars, the gallery stamps, and you – you are no longer Mary from Lambeth or Susan from Southwark. You are Desdemona. You are Lady Macbeth. You are anyone but yourself.

I used to stand in the wings and watch. The players never minded. Between scenes they would strip down to their shifts right there, careless as you please, whilst I pinned and tucked and smoothed. And I would watch them step back into the light, watch the shadows swallow them up and then cast them forth again, transformed. I wanted that. God forgive me, but I wanted it terrible fierce.

[Bitter laugh.]

Well. I have shadows enough now, have I not? And echoes. Though they do not transform me into anything fine.

The news came yesterday – or was it the day before? Time runs strange here – that Mr Lincoln has won his second term. Four more years for the rail-splitter, they say. The cotton lords in Lancashire are beside themselves. No end in sight to the blockade, no end to the mills standing idle. My own brother worked in the Manchester trade before – but that is another story, and not one I care to tell just now.

[Turns abruptly.]

What is the finest thing I ever found?

The wardress asked me that, three days since. She is not unkind, Mrs Jessop. She brought me a bit of soap – proper soap, mind, not that grey stuff they issue – and as she handed it through the slot she said, “What is the loveliest thing you ever found, girl? The sort of thing you’d tuck away and keep secret?”

I did not answer her straight off. I was thinking.

[Long pause. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, dreamlike.]

It was a letter. Not mine – you understand? Never meant for me at all. I found it tucked behind a mirror in one of the dressing rooms, yellowed with age, the ink gone brown. It was dated 1847 – seventeen years past, near enough. A love letter, though the gentleman did not sign his name. He wrote to an actress – I knew her name from the old playbills – and he promised her… oh, such things. That he would take her away from the stage, set her up in a house in Kensington, marry her if his circumstances allowed. He called her his “bright particular star,” and said that when he closed his eyes he saw only her face, radiant in the footlights.

I kept it. Folded it small and kept it in my bodice, and sometimes – between the matinee and the evening performance, when the theatre was quiet – I would take it out and read it again. And for those few moments I was her. I was beloved. I was someone’s bright particular star.

[Harsh laugh.]

I do not know what became of her. Perhaps he kept his word. Perhaps she is in Kensington still, grown stout and respectable, with a cook and a parlour-maid. Or perhaps – more likely – he abandoned her, and she ended as so many do. In the workhouse, or worse.

The letter is gone now. They took everything when they brought me here. Searched me thorough, turned out my pockets, shook down my skirts. Looking for – what? A weapon? A bit of poison? As though I were dangerous.

[Quieter, almost to herself.]

I am not dangerous. I am only tired.

And I am envious still. Envious of the women in the galleries who can walk out when the show is done. Envious of the wardresses who have homes to go to, fires to sit by, husbands who speak kindly to them. Envious even of Mrs Jessop’s bit of soap, which smells of lavender and not of this place.

Most of all, I am envious of that actress – the one in the letter. Not for what she had, perhaps, but for what she was promised. Someone looked at her and saw something worth loving. Worth risking reputation for. Worth writing those words for, in that careful hand.

No one has ever looked at me that way.

[The light is fading. She wraps her arms around herself.]

Do you know what I dream of now? Not escape – I am not such a fool as that. The walls here are too thick, the doors too strong. No, I dream of stepping onto a stage. A proper stage, with footlights blazing and a full house watching. I dream that I am wearing a gown of crimson silk, and my hair is dressed high, and when I open my mouth to speak, the words that come out are not mine but someone else’s. Someone brave. Someone beautiful.

And the audience leans forward. And the shadows fall away. And for one perfect moment I am not here at all.

[Long silence. Then, very quietly.]

They will call us in for evening prayers soon. Another Sunday concluded. Another week begun.

I shall keep dreaming.

[She turns and walks slowly toward the door. Her footsteps echo against the stone. The sound lingers long after she has gone.]

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Late 1864 in Britain saw the American Civil War’s strain felt across the Atlantic alongside Europe’s realignment after the Second Schleswig War’s close on 30th October 1864 with the Treaty of Vienna. The Union naval blockade had choked raw cotton to Lancashire since 1861, causing mill closures, mass unemployment, relief works, and large-scale emigration, while some mills experimented with Egyptian and Indian cotton as prices soared. Meanwhile, Denmark’s defeat forced the cession of Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia and Austria, sharpening their rivalry and setting a course toward German unification and the Austro‑Prussian War of 1866. In London, theatres like the Surrey embodied precarious livelihoods amid upheaval.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.