Chapter 14 Upon hearing this, Susan became angry…
Hearing this, Susan was furious. Her eyes widened as she glared at Elizabeth Wesley, almost ready to argue. Mary held her sister back, saying, "Miss Wesley, I've heard that a caged nightingale and its kind flying in the forest cannot understand each other. I don't think labor is something to be ashamed of. If a person is unhappy even after doing what they can do, then their life is far too miserable."
Elizabeth Wesley didn't understand the first part of what she said. In her opinion, Mary Price was undoubtedly just putting on a brave face and making excuses. Most of the female classmates who had been sitting around Mary had already left. Since she had achieved her goal, she didn't continue arguing with a poor girl like Mary.
Only Charlotte Brown, the cloth merchant's daughter, remained. She had always disliked Wesley's arrogant attitude. Seeing Mary looking at her curiously, Charlotte bluntly said, "I think you're right. My father always said that you can't rely on servants for everything, otherwise they will hold your life in their hands."
After speaking, Charlotte blinked her dark eyes, a color that Mary found incredibly endearing. Mary didn't care about the ostracism from her classmates; she hadn't come to this school to become a proper lady. However, making suitable friends would naturally be even more gratifying.
As the sisters grew closer to Charlotte Brown, one day Charlotte couldn't help but ask Mary and Susan about the hats they had been wearing. "Where did you buy your hats? The decorations are really special; I've never seen anything like them in the shops in the market district."
“These are the hats my sister and I picked out at a tailor shop. Mary doesn’t like those hats decorated with feathers and silk these days. This hat is decorated with rare conch shells and seashells brought back from overseas. Look here, the patterns and lace on the hat use embroidery techniques from the East.” Susan proudly showed her hat to her best friend.
This is a light blue Bonnet hat with a lace trim. On one side of the hat is a rose-colored, flower-shaped seashell decoration, next to which are green silk threads embroidered with leaves and vine-like lines, making it look lifelike.
“No wonder, this hat is so exquisite, especially this rose-colored ornament, it’s so beautiful. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known it was a seashell. I thought it was some kind of gemstone I’d never seen before!” Charlotte touched Susan’s hat and said enviously, “It’s really special. A seashell can be polished like a gemstone.”
“This is a special polishing technique used before decorating hats. I’ve heard that in the Far East, some rare and beautiful seashells were processed into gemstones by skilled artisans using this technique, and were even used in the ornaments of royalty. These seashells are whelks from the Caribbean Sea, a beautiful and rare species. It is said that the Inca royal family used them to make jewelry, and Italian artisans also used them to carve shell sculptures,” Mary explained from the side.
Seeing that Charlotte really loved Susan's hat, she offered, "Dear Charlotte, you can go to Taylor's tailor shop after school to pick one out yourself. She has many hats with shell decorations like these, but I can't guarantee that you can find this rose-colored seashell. Remember to mention my name and Susan's name, and Aunt Taylor, the shopkeeper, will give you a big discount."
Charlotte was overjoyed and thanked Mary repeatedly. Then she became troubled: apart from Wesley and Green, she got along well with many of her classmates at school. Everyone had been talking about the Price sisters' hats for a long time. Should she tell the other classmates when she got her new hat?
“It’s okay, you can just tell everyone that these hats were bought at Taylor’s tailor shop. The more you sell, the better!” Mary winked at Charlotte.
The Price sisters certainly didn't wear pretty hats to school every day to show off their difference; selling women's hats was Mary's new money-making plan.
In her previous life, Mary had audited jewelry design classes at school and tried making beads with seashells with her classmates. If it weren't for the limited tools available in 19th-century England, she could have even made beautiful necklaces, earrings, and bracelets with the conch shells William brought back. All the hats in Taylor's tailor shop were made by Mary and put there for consignment a while ago.
Firstly, compared to the design and production of ready-made clothing, the cost of making hats is much lower; secondly, what woman in the United Kingdom feels she already has enough hats? Every woman's wardrobe is missing a hat. As a seven-year-old girl, Mary and Susan could have chosen not to wear hats, but lately, they've been wearing them to school every day, partly to avoid the dust in Portsmouth's air, and partly to use the opportunity to promote their hats at the school—the girls' school students and their mothers are their target customers.
Perhaps upper-class ladies could buy more ornate and elaborate hats in London's hat shops, but for the middle class of Portsmouth, keeping up with such fashion was not so easy. They might never have the chance to go to London in their lifetime. Mary believed that the novel and unique decorations and wide variety of styles in her hat designs would surely attract everyone's attention and make them spend money on them.
Sure enough, ever since Charlotte started wearing her new hat to school, classmates and students from other grades have been asking her where she bought it. The tailor shop has been doing incredibly well lately, and Aunt Taylor is beaming with joy.
To ensure a sufficient supply, whenever Mary is home, the sound of cutting and polishing seashells can be heard constantly from the attic on the third floor of the Price house. One by one, the lustrous pearl shells are strung together by Mary with a thin thread into flowers, and then fixed to a photo hat.
“Mary, Richard just told me that we’ve sold fifteen hats in this period of time, and there are only five left. We have to restock quickly.” Susan ran excitedly up to the attic. “I can’t believe that so many people are buying our hats. When we bought these hats from the hat shop, they were only one crown (five shillings) each. We can make at least eleven shillings profit from each hat we sell!”
“You haven’t even factored in other costs, like the investment in polishing tools and the commission we pay Aunt Taylor. We lack space and manpower, so we have to consign the hats to Taylor’s tailor shop, paying her a shilling for each hat sold. And you haven’t even included the cost of the decorations on these hats. Although we’re currently using mostly the seashells William brought back, the embroidery and lace have also cost some money. Once we run out of seashells, embroidery alone won’t be enough to stand out among those hat shops that decorate with flowers, feathers, and so on.” Mary said this without looking up, focused on cutting the fabric in her hands, making a delicate artificial flower from silk, and continuing to decorate the hats. “We need to go to the port to buy some more seashells and also find new selling points.”
Mary and Susan alone certainly couldn't handle so much work at the same time. So, on Saturday afternoon, taking advantage of the half-day school break, John and Richard's cries of buying seashells echoed among the noisy sailors in the harbor. For a penny, they could get a pile of seashells from these ragged, hungry sailors. They still had to do some initial screening, selecting the relatively clean and shiny ones that were worth taking back.
The pebbles in the port area were heated by the afternoon sun, and the air was filled with the unique sea smell of the seaside. The seashells that the two brothers had selected in their baskets reflected colorful light in the sunlight.
While her two brothers were buying seashells, Mary and Susan were cutting fabric and grinding whalebone in the attic. Hats supported by whalebone frames were more stable and could hold more decorations, but of course, they were also more expensive. These hats couldn't be bought from hat shops; the two sisters had to try making them by hand.
Mary managed to complete the new order before the existing hats in the store sold out, and twenty new hats were delivered to Taylor's tailor shop.
"Your hats don't really take up much space here, and recently many ladies have brought their daughters to shop here, and many people are willing to have me make clothes for them in the future..." Aunt Taylor was somewhat embarrassed, feeling that she had taken advantage of Miss Price.
“Don’t say that. We’ll stick to what we agreed on in the original agreement,” Mary said firmly. “You must remember the sales strategy I told you before. The craftsmanship used in these shell decorations is the same as that of the Eastern royal family, and the patterns on the hats are the most exquisite and unique embroidery techniques from the East. If we can’t meet the deadline, please forgive us, ladies. After all, each hat takes a long time to make by hand.”
For shell-decorated hats to become a trend in Portsmouth, it's certainly not enough to rely solely on the girls attending the girls' school. Mary had already recently sent two of her finest hats to General Maxwell's house.
Anne was curious about the decoration she had never seen before and immediately put it on. The general's wife, however, was used to seeing fancy hats in London, so this hat was just novel and interesting to her. It wasn't until a casual party that she chose to wear the hat that the other officers' wives at the party praised her for her fashionable and innovative style, saying that she was indeed one of the most stylish people in Portsmouth.
After the party, the general's wife truly fell in love with the shell-decorated hat, and the other officers' wives also inquired about which shop it came from. Mary's hat business was booming.
However, just as orders were swelling like sails at high tide, a crisis was quietly approaching with the northeast wind.
A note from the author:
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