Later still I came to know it as the essence not of pleasure, but of grief. It was a scent which as a girl I loved uncritically later I heard it described, by theatre managers and artistes, as the smell of laughter, the very odour of applause. Like our oyster-house, it had its own particular scent-the scent, I know now, of music halls everywhere-the scent of wood and grease-paint and spilling beer, of gas and tobacco and hair-oil, all combined. The Palace was small and, I suspect, a rather shabby theatre but when I see it in my memories I see it still with my oyster-girl’s eye-I see the mirror-glass which lined the walls, the crimson plush upon the seats, the plaster cupids, painted gold, which swooped above the curtain. Here is a paragraph from the first chapter: Tipping the Velvet is told in the first person by Nancy, but from the vantage point of 20 years later, so we get a sense of what life was like for her in the moment, as well as the wisdom and distance of maturity. Kitty, especially, does not want to admit to being a “tom”– the slang word for a lesbian at that time. Nancy and Kitty begin a hesitant romance which they are desperate to keep under wraps. Nancy soon becomes Kitty’s dresser and then, once they move to London, her co-star.
What was it like to be a lesbian in late Victorian London? Sarah Waters gives us some idea through her character Nancy Astley, who grew up in her parents’ seaside oyster restaurant and becomes enamored, at age 18, with a cross-dressing performer, Kitty Butler, at the local theater.
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