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Updated: July 6, 2025
"I know not," says Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows fastened, she climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new object instantly absorbed her attention.
In fact, the idea of being thrown out of work, in the midst of so many other painful circumstances, had made a terrible impression upon the young workwoman, the traces of recent tears furrowed her cheeks without her knowing it, her features expressed the deepest despair and she appeared so exhausted, so weak, so overcome, that Florine offered her arm to support her, and said to her kindly: "Pray walk in and rest yourself; you are very pale, and seem to be ill and fatigued."
As far as they would allow her, and her strength would permit, she took her part in the household work; but she was principally occupied with her needle, and as she was an excellent workwoman, she was never without such orders as she was able to undertake. And yet it seemed to him that there were times when she was on the very verge of breaking through her reserve.
Then she resumed aloud. "Do you know if she is a good workwoman?" "I believe so, mother." The superior rose, took a register from a shelf, appeared to be looking into it attentively for some time, and then said, as she replaced it: "Fetch in this young girl, and go and wait for me in the press-room."
"So, madame," said the old woman. "So Idamore, his name is Idamore, leastways that is what he calls himself, for his real name is Chardin Idamore fancied that your uncle had a deal more money than he owned to, and he managed to send his sister Elodie and that was a stage name he gave her to send her to be a workwoman at our place, without my daughter's knowing who she was; and, gracious goodness! but that girl turned the whole place topsy-turvy; she got all those poor girls into mischief impossible to whitewash them, saving your presence
An old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashion said, "There's a girl who will come to a bad end." She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love, out of bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a miserable scamp, a sort of mendicant musician, a lazy beggar, who beat her, and who abandoned her as she had taken him, in disgust. She adored her child.
She was an unskilled workwoman, not especially gifted in any way or fitted by her upbringing to earn her daily bread. Every day she bought the Fieramosca, and she tried to see the other local papers when they came out. Several people advertised who wanted to exchange lessons, but no one seemed inclined to pay. Once she saw names she knew in the social column.
The same processes of inner and outer development which have made of the unknown English workman or workwoman of twenty years ago, the recognized servants of the community, welcomed everywhere by mayors and magistrates to help in the service of the poor, will, out of the clever Oriental, I believe, far more rapidly develop leaders in the new line of Christian improvement in every sphere of life.
So that if Madam How has been a rough and hasty workwoman in pumping her treasures up out of her mine with her great steam-pumps, she shows herself delicate and tender and kindly enough in giving them away afterwards. Nay, even the fine dust which is sometimes blown out of volcanos is useful to countries far away.
At the rate she was going, Clemence was not likely to have any marrow left in her bones long before she was thirty years old. Mornings after big parties she was unable to feel the ground she trod upon, and fell asleep over her work, whilst her head and her stomach seemed as though stuffed full of rags. But she was kept on all the same, for no other workwoman could iron a shirt with her style.
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