GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS EXTRACTS
Mary and the Rabbit Dream, by Noémi Kiss-Deáki
I.
The Rabbit Dream
IT IS MARY AND ELIZABETH, two women, very poor, very tired, working out in the fields. It is their last hour of work that day; they are allowed to go home soon. Mary is the most tired of the two, her movements slow but persistent in weeding the many hop shrubs, making her hands coarse and tough. She is four months pregnant with her third child, and ever since her third round of that loathsome condition started, her strength is diminished, making each day of labour very difficult to bear.
But Mary is used to things being difficult to bear.
Life in Godalming, in 1724, is harsh and miserable, more often than not.
Harsh and miserable, for the poor people, that is. The rich people of Godalming, a town of around two to three thousand souls, live quite comfortably. They live so comfortably, that a wealthy woman by the name of the Duchess of Richmond can afford to spend 1 pound sterling and 12 shillings each for clothes for her servants to please the eyes, and a whole of 12 shillings for a new coat for Cosima, the family’s pet monkey. Cosima is a name that comes from a word found in the Greek language, a word that means order and harmony. When the Duchess of Richmond gazes upon her pet monkey, the pet monkey named Cosima, clad in her brand new and elegant coat, she experiences a feeling of order and harmony.
Mary Toft earns one penny a day, while labouring out in fields. If Mary Toft were to buy a coat for a pet monkey, a pet monkey living more comfortably than she does, she would have to labour for 144 days without using her wages for anything else. Only that way, after labouring for 144 days, getting one penny a day, without spending those pennies on anything else, instead saving each and every one, only then would she be able to afford a brand new elegant coat for a pet monkey, to inspire feelings of order and harmony.
An impossible equation, of course, as impossible as it would have been to bridge the chasm between the rich and the poor in the town of Godalming in 1724.
It is their last hour of work, and just before Elizabeth is about to say that they can call it a day, they see it;
A rabbit, stirring among the bushes, suddenly springing up, leaping away.
The women stare, a rabbit, a beautiful rabbit; its body bountiful, meat, fur, nourishment; it must have ran away, it must have ran away from the rich people’s cages, and Elizabeth starts to run, like a mad-woman, and Mary starts to run also, like a mad-woman, if they catch this rabbit, they will have a feast, their bellies will be filled and content for a long time, and the mother – the mother-in-law, she will be so astonished, so grateful, that she will surely be kind to them for a long time, maybe even her hard gaze will turn soft! Oh, how happy she will be, with her daughter and daughter-in-law, if they come home with a whole rabbit! The promise of that happiness, of the matron of the house turning kind and peaceful, almost has a stronger pull on them than the rabbit itself. But the rabbit is quicker; the rabbit is quicker than both of them and Mary is the first one to realize, she slows her steps down, out of breath, but Elizabeth goes on, she goes on until the rabbit is truly out of sight and then she falls over, as if losing all her strength, and then Mary notices that while falling over, she has started crying. Her crying, a quiet crying, and then it suddenly turns into anger, to rage, shaking her body in stifled, violent sobs, and it still goes on, and Mary stays where she is, she looks out over the bushes, the many hop bushes, and she tries to pretend she doesn’t notice.
When it still goes on, in the end she gets out, she says to the sister-in-law:
“Beth – Beth, pull yourself together. It was only a rabbit.”
She says that, although knowing full well a rabbit is never just a rabbit.
Not in Godalming.
Instead, one such rabbit is everything that is wrong with Godalming.
That rabbit and its brethren are the cause of much hardship, of Mary’s husband’s declining trade and of the rich people’s wealth.
Because it is like this;
Godalming has good soil. Godalming has the best soil for rabbit farming.
So much so, that by 1724 rabbit farms have replaced areas that once were pastures for sheep to produce wool and thus work for the cloth trade. Fields where grains and vegetables could be planted and farmed would be replaced also.
The largest rabbit farm in Godalming occupies a site that is nearly 260 acres.
Only the rich people are allowed to have rabbit farms. Only the rich people can afford rabbits, to eat, to use, to take pleasure in for food, comfort, warmth.
Rabbit farms are the dominions of the wealthy people.
Rabbit farms that some rabbits occasionally run away from, eating and destroying any remaining pastures and fields, for the poorer people to use.
Mary Toft lives among the poorest of the poorest. They own no fields, no animals.
Her husband, Joshua Toft, is an unskilled clothworker. The poorest trade of them all, a trade where all work is soon to dry up.
And Mary Toft is a seasonal worker, taking any available work with the women of her circle, any available work, any available work no one else wants to do, in the hop gardens, in the fields, around the year.
And if anyone sights a rabbit, if a poor person sights a rabbit, wishing to catch it, if the poor person herself is caught doing that, it is a crime harshly punished.
Same goes for fish. If anyone tries to steal fish from the rich people’s ponds, they are prosecuted.
It doesn’t help to confess that one stole the fish to eat it at home in one’s family.
Any fish-stealers are to be prosecuted and punished.
The same goes for rabbit-stealers and rabbit-poachers.
Elizabeth gets a hold of herself finally. She stops sobbing. She collects herself.
Elizabeth and Mary return home to one of the poorest quarters, to the three-generational household where the mother and mother-in-law Ann Toft reigns.