Exit the Actress by Priya Parmar Read Free Book Online

discreet?
    “I’ll bet he is. How would you like to sell oranges instead? I need one more girl for Mr. Killigrew’s new theatre in Bridges Street.” She held out a fat, round orange. “For the birthday girl.”
    “Thank you!” I said, pocketing the sweet fruit. China oranges are such a luxury; I would save it to share with Grandfather.
    “You’d best understand,” she said, catching my chin in her hand, “I sell fruit, not girls. The minute you sell yourself, you work for someone else.” She looked hard at my face, her expression searching and fierce. Then, breaking into a smile, she patted my cheek. “No, I can see it. You don’t have the vanity to go bad. Not like your sister over in Lewkenor Lane. She was always going to go that way.” I must have shown my surprise, for she laughed a kind, enveloping laugh. “Oh yes, sweeting, I’ve been watching you.”
    So it is decided: I will give up the Octopus and become an orange girl.
    Note—If Candlemas day be dry and fair
—but it was cloudy, so six more weeks of hard winter.

2.

Orange Girl Ellen

 
    By Most Particular Desire

    T HEATRE R OYAL, C OVENT G ARDEN

    Audiences Brilliant and Overflowing

    Are Invited to Attend the Revival of

    T HE H UMOUROUS L IEUTENANT

    A Tragicomedy by Mr. Beaumont and Mr. fletcher

    This Present Wednesday, May 7, 1663

    It will be repeated tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday next

    P RESENTED B Y MR. T HOMAS K ILLIGREW,
L EASEE AND R OYAL P ATENT H OLDER

    To be Performed by:

    T HE K ING’S C OMPANY (E STABLISHED 1660)

    With: Mr. John Lacy, Mr. Michael Mohun,

    Mr. Theophilus Bird,

    And: Mr. Nicholas Burt, Mrs. Margaret Hughes,

    and Mrs. Anne Marshall

    P ERFORMANCES B EGIN AT 3 O’CLOCK DAILY

When I Begin to Work

Friday, May 8, 1663 (day after the opening, and my second day!)
    We stand with our backs to the stage. We line up and face out, and as the audience piles in—we begin. Each girl has her own technique. Alice Winthrop tugs down her bodice until she is nearly bursting out, leans low over the young men in the pit, and, breathing in their ears, asks them if they might care for an orange.
Of course
they might—unless she has been eating onions. Lily Beale (Mad Lil) used to sell oranges at the Duke’s Theatre (the Opera) and so is known to the regulars and has her patter down perfectly. She targets couples: “Go on, Mr. Weathercombe, buy your lady a lovely China orange! Don’t you be too cheap to treat her to something sweet.” Lil could sell water to a fish.
    Meg, her skirts pinned high on her stocky frame to allow her greater mobility, is
everywhere
up and down the aisles, selling oranges, delivering messages, chatter, chatter, chatter: hats with the ladies, hunting with the men—and spreading gossip faster than any news sheet. She keeps a close eye on her girls, deciding where we stand and how many we sell, and when she feels like a pitch isn’t working she invents a new one. Laughing at my inexperience, she calls from the aisles: “You don’t have to do much. You’ve got the goods. Little bit sweet, little bit sharp: always honest, and pretty as a peach. Just get out there, and they’ll flock to you!”
    And they
did
flock to me. I sold my basket before the end of the first act! I also sold some of Alice’s share, as she got waylaid on Jack Parson’s knee in Fop’s Corner through much of the second act—Mrs. Parson had stayed home with a head. I sold twenty-six oranges, ferried three love notes—one was rejected unopened by a thick-necked woman in a sour green dress—and brought a lovely girl in a lavender lawn gown a rose from a man in thegallery with a bushy moustache. Then I got to watch the third act from the footlights. It was
marvellous.
    LONDON GAZETTE
    Sunday, May 10, 1663

    Most Deservedly Called London’s Best and Brilliant Broadsheet

    The Social Notebook

    Volume 73

    Ambrose Pink’s recollections of an evening of theatre

    Darlings,
    On Thursday last, London’s beau-monde witnessed