Poppy

This gal is perhaps one of my favorites, though, within my heart lies the darkest of spaces where all my dolls inhabit.

 Poppy has long luscious red hair, rosy cheeks, and a smile which suggests whatever you might say or do, she very much has her own thoughts. This particularly scares me in the dead of night.

In the next story she’s quite the woman and makes a mean mental pie. I find her to be terribly charming. When I first created her, in my head I thought she would be something of a Lizzie Borden character, but that somehow didn’t fly. I don’t know much about the Lizzie, I’m sure she had her reasons. I hope she lived a fulfilling life, but somehow this didn’t fit for Poppy. I was more intrigued by the characters I read about in Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies.  Much inspired by its contents, I had to incorporate something of a nod to it.

With that I give you the following tale.

FYI, should you wish to 'ave a look and mayhaps puuuurrr-Chase ,this broad is available-

https://folksy.com/shops/VKHornby

Also, feel free to follow and judge me on instagram 

https://www.instagram.com/vkhornby/

Have a wonderful evening and don’t forget the cannoli,

-J

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Poppy

The House With No Name was actually known as “The House of Deeds Delivered Most Cheap” by patrons in spite of the fact those particular deeds performed within the confines of this reputed establishment were not the thriftiest options.  Most would agree, however, the ends most certainly justified the means. And it is here we find our next character of note -  Poppy.

If you were looking for a little (or a lot) of female entertainment for an evening and were quite unfamiliar with your choices, there was at one time a very helpful guide to assist you. You would need to start by seeking out a business who deals in serialized published material and to mention in your conversation with this friendly agent that you wished to see all the city has to offer, donating a few of your heavier coins. If you seem genuine enough and you have not displeased or given him cause to suspect you of any misdeed, you will be given a book two fingers thick and of reasonable enough dimensions so as not to protrude from the inner coat pocket.

It is important to keep in mind that if you should be seen by any official holding this in your possession, you will not have quite the day or night you anticipated. It is best to purchase a jacket with a little lock and key for the book while you are still in the agent’s presence. While the book serves an excellent guide during your stay in the city, there is a portion of the material devoted to a requisite number of advertisements aimed mostly to men’s grooming, luxury items, estates for sale, exotic animals, and very high quality ink. Within the margins of these promotions, there are details that pertain to communities who specialize in niche matters of interest and are generally coded in some fashion. If the reader is so inclined, he may also obtain a cipher from the agent, again, for a few coins more. Thus armed with all the material he requires to make his stay as interesting as possible, the reader may then retire back to his lodgings and make his decisions on how to sensibly divide his attentions in this remarkable city that the those few among us are fortunate enough to call home.

Reclining in his armchair, perhaps with a cigar and respectable measure of brandy, the reader is advised to lock the door to his dwellings so as not to be interrupted or caught unexpectedly holding the book in question.  In the first portion of the publication one could expect to find a list of venues arranged by ward and generally follows a clockwork order starting in the North. It is aimed for men who are accompanied by spouses or female relatives who wish to join them in their quests about town. This section terminates after only a page or more for the kind of amusement this guide offers, there are not many established businesses that cater to both men and women.

The bulk of this cherished directory by and large aims to serve the proclivities of the solitary libertine in his pursuit of pleasure. It is organized by ratings followed up with a digest anonymously submitted to “The Godfrey Group” (the local authority and independent overseer for quality assurance).  In an attempt to protect the privacy of clients while maintaining an honest and unbiased appraisal of an establishment, this system is yet unable to provide incentives to increase submissions, nor is there any manner in which to authenticate them. So long as one can read and write to a reasonable standard, they may provide their testimonial.

Within these pages you will find what seem like factual accounts, while others we may assume were deposited under false pretenses. The following entries may further illustrate the point.

In this instance we have the meanderings of what can only authentically be derived from a male brain.

☾  Mrs. Freckensh--t, in the harbor district, N, opposite Geldon’s, next door to the Shoe-maker's Shop

Her moments spent in mindless haste

Will surely end this life of waste.

A titanic overbearing beast, ignorant of her talentless intellect, romps about from room to room purloining the precious air from those in her surround.

Her fair ginger locks would otherwise be an asset if they were not so ill fitted to the grimacing face over which they hang. Her dental region is black and full of rot and should the effluvium from this gangrenous cavity reach your nostrils, it will cling to your person for nothing less than a fortnight.

 She favors male company much more than she should and has a particular fondness for the worst kind.  Prefers to share her sheets with a younger fellow who leaves her nightstand empty rather than the wiser soul who would have placed no less than two scorch in her palm. Her carelessness has left her without so much as a trill on most days and when she is rather forced through circumstance to spend her time with a gentleman who is not her favorite, does so with indifference and lacks the passion or the enthusiasm one would expect in even the lowest measure. This lady lives in the second floor and is still in keeping with her impecunious company but no doubt the face changes all too frequently.

In the next account you will certainly deduce from the ill formed phrases an attempt to achieve nothing more than to increase the prospects of one particular lady as she has recently fallen into disfavor. It is important to note that in looks and number, the author has drastically underestimated the age of this damsel and with this one misjudgment there are very easily others that follow.

☾☾☾☾☾☾  Miss Opancu—t, Central Region, in the mews nested between Mrs. Bisby’s Haberdashery and Leroy’s Tea Room

Beautiful maiden, please come to me

In perfect form, fair and free

Nothing could better describe Miss Opancu—t, than the lines quoted above. A sybarite whose whimsical flare and cunning mind, with a face so fair and unblemished is seldom found amongst her kind but oft sought. Her teeth are original missing only the interior molars. Her exhales are scented of hyssop.

She could not be more than 20 on this earth but long enough in this business to understand the ways of man. She offers her divinity expertly in ways where others are chaste and ye’d scarcely find a man whose hand would hesitate to go deep in his pockets for the pleasure of even an hour in her company.  She is not overly focused in the matters of expense but requires a minimum of one scorch two trills. However, rather than lose a good customer, particularly a regular, she would accept half that sum accompanied by a bottle of nothing less than Fenwick’s Raspberry Gin.

And there you have it.  The reader must judge for themselves.

* The ratings for each of the women were illustrated with a little crescent moon. As you would logically expect, the number of moons given represented the higher rating.  The scale currently has no cap but is more of an indicator.

This guide is, of course, only a guide and as you work your way through town you will discover many inaccuracies within its pages. Published but once a year, it cannot possibly account for the movements, misfortunes, or changes in the lives of those named during the press.  Consequently, this method has impacted the very nature of the trade.  Nowadays a girl may observe more loyalty to their house, and equally, the Madam of the house is if for no other reason than the frequency of footfall obligated to keep the successful working girl under her roof. This has generally led to a rise in living conditions (happy girls make happy customers), and more of an emphasis is placed on personal hygiene and healthcare. Each house has a unique set of rules and the laws tend to supersede those of the council.

Undoubtedly, some places are better than others. One could argue this in any station in life. Some peasants have better lords; some kings have better queens, so on and so forth. If I were to place ten years worth of “The Good Night Guide For The Insufferably Restless”, you would, without prompting, detect an indisputable constant. The higher the shits given, the more shits were offered. And for the purposes of this story I will quickly reveal, the highest ratings listed with the highest rated girls could all be found under the heading “The House With No Name”.

And that was absolutely the case. There was no sign above a door. The only features by which one could identify this very highly sought after emporium of earthly delights was a well (disused after the epidemic) situated north east to the painted black door on the corner and a white dove resting on the fourth story window sill. No one has been able to tell if the dove was real or stuffed.

A few years after Alice met Wendy, they both decided to uproot and move to some unknown destination. They bequeathed their worldly goods to various successors and this is how Poppy and the girls collectively owned the property they had worked and lived in for half a decade. After this many of the girls became somewhat lazy and began to turn down callers which caused a riotous argument that left Iridia with a wardrobe of destroyed petticoats and Laurette’s collection of expensive colognes smashed with the contents seeping into the floorboards below. They held a meeting and all agreed to each take on one customer per week and this would satisfy the increasing house debts mounting up from over the period of inactivity.

This worked for a while until one night a gentleman came to the door on a Wednesday evening, and it being Poppy’s agreed night, she was preparing herself in the upstairs dormitory.  At first he seemed subdued, but very frank in his requests.  He was led into the parlor where the cozy fire glowed in its place and the clock softly ticked. Encouraged to take a book while they prepared for him a small platter and a measure of brandy, he was left alone.  He seemed agitated at this but resigned himself to his seat and withdrew from his inner left breast pocket a small book decorated in a marble dust jacket and furnished with a tiny lock. He proceeded to read his very small book until after ten minutes were spent he became quite impatient. He could hear laughter in the outer rooms which caused a great deal of insecurity and upset in him. There in the corner of the room sat a plump tabby with white feet and neck snoozing gently in the heat of the fire. This mad man had within him a very dark thought and rose from his seat slowly walking in the direction of this peaceful feline. With his hands outstretched, he prepared to pounce on the cat with the intention of flinging it into the crackling fire; only this very savvy pet was more than a move ahead of its unsophisticated adversary. In one swift motion it leapt from the chair, eyes opening in midair, and clung onto the flesh of the man’s head. As it latched on and pulled the back of his skull foreword with its upper appendages, the lower feet pushed away, clawing the face and shredding the man’s features. The cat, Puddy, then flew off and ran into a darkened corner. 

When the girls heard his shriek they all ran to open the door and barreled into the parlor. The scene was horrific. The caller was standing in the light of the fire with a greasy red face, eyes which had been punctured and were oozing a strange colored liquid over strings of flesh that flapped as he squealed in agony.

Poppy ran down three flights of stairs and entered the scene through the swarm of girls. The man began flailing his arms in a maniacal fashion moving towards the women. Poppy snatched the bottle of brandy Geraldine was still holding onto and taking a brief swig of its contents, swung the bottle towards the head of the red beast and continued to do so until the body went down and the bottle smashed into smithereens all over floor.

The arms and legs twitched for a quarter of an hour while they all watched, dumbfounded and understandably shocked. Shortly after, Puddy emerged from under the chair he had been hiding, his little white feet turned crimson, and galloped to Poppy for her to lift him into her arms. Poor Puddy was terribly shaken and she immediately brought him into the kitchen to clean his fur.

That was pretty much the end of the brothel and beginning of a new life for everyone. In the process of cleaning up the mess from the gentleman caller, they had discovered their culinary talents and something that gave them an even greater pleasure than that of their former profession.

They rallied together to refurbish the building into a bakery, working endless days and nights perfecting their wares.  They invented a business title composed from the first letter of each of their names ascending from the number of scars they each had on their right ankle. Katrina had only one. A great leap up, Iridia counted ten, Poppy, nineteen; Laurette, twenty-three; Isobel-again a huge rise, forty-two; Nina, forty-five, and lastly Geraldine, fifty-nine.  It is said this number corresponded to the total number of gentlemen each girl had entertained up to the moment they joined hands to call it a day, but if we take into account the amount that even Katrina had contributed into the pool of money to get the business started, I think it’s safe to say this number was merely a multiple of another and only this could account for the large sum that lifted them into eminence and what they would eventually be known by, the purveyors of exceedingly good pies.

Though Poppy was by no means the greatest earner in her previous incarnation, she excelled in her new role, outselling the others collectively two-to-one. They couldn’t keep her pies on the shelves. There was, of course, a degree of envy and jealousy amongst her peers, but true to their agreement, she contributed half of her earnings back into the business and this alone provided each of them with a new frock at least once a month.

Nevertheless, pride gave way to greed and the idea was planted one day to accept money far beyond the price of the most expensive pie to inject a substance into a much more inferior and less worthy pie that would render the consumer unconscious and deprive them of all of those qualities the living entertained, breathing for one. This one act led to many others, and soon spread into the other girls, save for one, Poppy, who was not aware of any of it nor would she have approved of such frivolous danger.

But then the thing happened. It was a dark night as she made her way home from a meeting with suppliers. She was extremely careful with the origin of raw materials and though diseases flung about in the same way people threw their excrement, the mortality rate had dramatically increased in the surrounding wards, which had forced her out further beyond the realm.

That night it started to rain and the wind began to blow. She darted around, cover to cover, determined not to spend money on a cab. He came around the corner and recognized her from a recent article entitled: “The Pleasure House Of The Heavenly Seven: From Brothel to Bakery”.

They all had their forms sketched and displayed under the heading, and Poppy with her long thick beetroot braids, bright eyes, and big lips stood in the middle of the crowd.

A frequent contributor to “The Good Nights Guide”, this man had been a regular diner at the pie house until he came across this piece in the paper. It left him with a sour taste and heart as his own wife’s eatery was failing quite substantially (he never ate there) while a group of reformed whores were stealing what little money he had.

He followed Poppy into a mews covered in linens left out for the rain to wash. Pouncing on her he whispered in her ears the most hateful abuse before the excitement of his anger reached its climax. By the grace of a merciful entity, it lasted no more time than it took for him to release the diminutive apparatus from the bottom of his trousers.

Poppy lumped on the street, saturated and sullied.  She ventured home and told her girls. They all confessed and revealed their actions of late to her and made a suggestion. Immediately after the reign of displeasure she articulated in the form of a few smashed objects, she looked upon them. In their eyes she saw compassion and love and reciprocated this back to each. Before the week was out, that refined specimen that entertained himself upon Poppy on a darkened dreary night befell a most spectacular and torturous demise that to this day is confined to the most gruesome of tales told in quiet whispers at midnight when the moon is black.