Posted By Summer Foovay on April 10, 2010
Mr. Jones brought me the Brownie. Well, I’m sure that isn’t his real name at all – but that’s what we called him at the house. He had been one of my best “boyfriends” for several years. He came to see me at least once a month – sometimes more.
He was in the department store business – he had the first one in our town – and was always bringing me the most amazing gifts. Bolts of pretty cloth, fancy dresses, gaudy costume jewelry, and once even a beautiful fur coat that some society matron had returned claiming the damage was there when she bought it. Mr. Jones said he was pretty sure she wore it once and managed to burn it with her untidy cigarettes – a habit in women he greatly disapproved of – but to keep her custom he let her exchange it and brought the coat to me. The burn was small and easily repaired by one of the girls who was handy with needle and thread, and the coat was deliciously warm and beautiful as well. All the girls envied me every winter for years!
Then one year for Christmas, he brought me the Brownie and from then on every time he came he brought me several more rolls of film. That little camera was the source of never ending delight to all of us girls. I took pictures of all our ladies, posed together, and portraits. I snuck up on girls asleep or at their dressing table and snapped quick shots. If the customers liked it, I took shots of them with and without their favorite girls on their laps.
Pretty soon, Shugar – who was always full of great ideas, especially any idea about making money – got the idea to start selling the portraits I did of her to her clients for a few pennies. Her clients liked the ones I had of her in her fanciest dresses, but also wanted some of her totally nude, or some said, with just her hose and garter, or just her bloomers, or just this or that. I took more pictures and Shugar charged more for the picture, the less she was dressed.
All along, she was giving me half what she got for them. She said she posed, but I took them and did all the real work.
It wasn’t long before all the girls in our house were doing the same. Oh we had fun! Trying different poses, and different lights and different rooms in the house. We all took a trip to the beach and took more pictures there, and a trip out to the woods and took more pictures.
Our clients were having a great time with their pictures, too. They shared them with their gentlemen friends. It got to where some gents would come by just to buy some photos!
Well, of course, word got around to all the other bawdy houses in town. Next thing you know, their girls are coming to me to ask me to take pictures of them, too.
Meanwhile, some of the gents started bringing pictures from other photographers to show to us. Lots of the girls in them looked really unhappy, stiff and posed in silly positions with all sorts of clapped together props and backgrounds. Everyone agreed my pictures were a lot better.
I think part of it was none of the girls cared a bit about getting naked in front of me. I mean, here I was just another girl working in the house right along with them. They were a lot more comfortable with me than they could possibly be with some man poking and prodding and trying to make them pose like this or that and leering at them all the time.
Our scholar, Jane – she wasn’t really a scholar; we just teased her like that. She loved to read books and all those magazines and things. One of her clients brought back some of the naturist magazines from France and gave them to her. We all read them avidly and admired the photos. She let it be known that she liked books and magazines about the new photographic process. Of course, that was just so her men would buy her those things, and she read them – she would read anything – and then passed them on to me. Often, we would sit and discuss with all the girls what pictures were the best and I got all sorts of ideas for more pictures.
Trina could draw. In fact, she was a wonderful artist. Now and then, she would do some illustrations for the local rags. She made a lot more in the house – but she used the extra money for art supplies, and books about art, and now and then she could even afford some lessons with an artist who was willing. She used to model for one artist, and then he would show her what he was doing, and help her with her drawing and paintings, too.
Sometimes she even sold a painting by hanging it up in the house and if a man admired it, we’d tell him he could buy it.
Anyway – between all those things we got the idea that Trina ought to paint me some backdrops on great big canvases, like the ones they sold for sails. It took a long time for the paints to dry, and we both had to pitch in to buy enough to do those big canvases, but they were really beautiful. All the girls who had pictures done before, wanted new pictures with the new backdrops.
Maude, the madam of our house, was as excited about all this as we were, but it was getting to the point where my room looked like a warehouse stacked with photography equipment, backdrops, props and things. Besides that, we had girls from other houses dropping by to get their pictures taken, and gents coming by just for more pictures. When it came to gents dropping by to see me and ask me to take pictures of their mistresses, she drew the line.
“Dixie, I know you love taking the pictures. It has been a lot of fun having all this going on here – and of course, it certainly never hurts to have gents dropping by all times of the day and night. Never know if they might come to buy a picture, and end up spending a bit of time upstairs with one of our girls. But it has just gotten quite out of control.”
I sighed and smiled, my eyes downcast. I had a pretty good idea I knew what was coming.
Maude reached across the breakfast table and put her warm, pudgy hand over mine, patting me comfortingly. We were alone at the breakfast table that early morning, so she could speak to me frankly. Maude and I have been friends since we were both girls in another madams house. She was a few years older, and more experienced, and is almost like a mama to me in some ways.
“Dixie, it is a shameful thing in our business, that most men like the youngest, freshest girls they can afford. Most of these girls don’t have enough sense to save their money – although I try and encourage and help them to invest it sensibly so someday they can retire.”
I nodded. For years we teasingly called her Maude’s savings and loan. She would, if you asked (and often she would suggest it to any particularly profligate spending girl), hold back a bit of your pay every night in a special “kitty” for you. Now if something came up that you just had to have or do, or something looked like a very ripe opportunity, she would be happy to give you that money. It was often quite surprising to see how much you had built up! She had some money of mine squirreled away for me – although I had long been spending most of my money on more photography things.
“Now you are hardly an old lady yet” she grinned at me with sparkling eyes – to take the bite out of the next bit, “but you are no longer young either. I also happen to know that you make as much these days taking your pictures as you do on your back. Why don’t you see if you can find a nice place for a studio, with a little apartment above maybe, and go into business for yourself? I can send you the girls for pictures, and the gents to buy them – and so will all the other madams in town.”
Maude told me how much I had saved by with her – and I had some set aside myself under the mattress. Together, I knew it was more than enough for a little place in town. In truth, I’d been getting a little tired of the life and had been thinking myself of retiring and setting up a photography studio.
Jane had showed me in some of her fancy magazines where you could write and send your own photos in, and if they liked them, they would buy them. I had already sold them a few, on top of everything else. I felt that I was ready to go out on my own – and trust in my photographic abilities to support me.
That day I set out, walking downtown and looking at the buildings for a likely spot. I also spoke to my gents in the next few weeks as they came to see me. We served a good many businessmen who would know the sort of little place I would need, perhaps even have one they were willing to sell.
In less than a week, I heard from one of the girls about a place that had been a little dance studio. The instructor was an older lady who wished to retire to a quiet place in the country, perhaps on the Continent where she could go to the city to see a ballet now and again. I went up and looked it over. I didn’t care for the mirrors on the walls; I felt they would cause a terrible glare. There were a few other details I wanted to change, including building a little parlor to the side to welcome clients in a homey yet businesslike sort of atmosphere, and a gallery in which to hang finished portraits in large sizes as examples of my work with space for cabinets to hold the prints that were for sale. I was also set on adding a dark room of my own – so that would also have to be specially built.
The apartment above was beautifully appointed and cozy. The dance instructor had even installed indoor toilets in both upper and lower stories. Since she was thinking of going so far as Europe, she was quite willing to leave her appliances and most of her furniture. This would certainly save me a bit of money, since I owned no such things having lived in the bawdy houses all my adult life. Between us we hammered out a deal. Imagine, two women sitting down at tea and working out the details of a property sale. Well, we did. I gave thanks that we lived in an enlightened part of the Americas that allowed women to own and transfer their own property.
A month later I took possession. With Maude’s agreement, however, I stayed another month with her while some workmen made the changes I required to the building. The big mirrors were heavy, and had cost the danseur a fortune. I left just one on the wall, thinking I might have some sort of use for it – as part of a dressing room if nothing else.
The rest I gave to Maude to see if she could either use them or perhaps sell them or trade them for something more useful. She was delighted. There are those customers who like to watch themselves with a woman. After I moved into the little apartment she redid my room with the mirrors just for “special uses”. I like to think I left her with some sort of thanks and good memories of me after she gave me such a good home for so long, and was so good to me as my little hobby turned into a business under her roof.
Category: Dixie Jones Photographer |
Comments Off
Tags: original fiction, photo manip, Victorian trivia, vintage nude
Hi! I am Summer Foovay. I create line art or coloring pages at